Lex Fridman Podcast - #145 – Matthew Johnson: Psychedelics

Episode Date: December 14, 2020

Matthew W. Johnson is a professor and psychedelics researcher at Johns Hopkins. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: - Brave: https://brave.com/lex - Neuro: https://www.getneuro.com and use code LEX to get 15% off - Four Sigmatic: https://foursigmatic.com/lex and use code LexPod to get up to 60% off - Cash App: https://cash.app/ and use code LexPodcast to get $10 EPISODE LINKS: Matt's Twitter: https://twitter.com/Drug_Researcher Matt's Website: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/profiles/results/directory/profile/0800020/matthew-johnson Study Website: https://hopkinspsychedelic.org/ PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://lexfridman.com/podcast Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/2lwqZIr Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2nEwCF8 RSS: https://lexfridman.com/feed/podcast/ YouTube Full Episodes: https://youtube.com/lexfridman YouTube Clips: https://youtube.com/lexclips SUPPORT & CONNECT: - Check out the sponsors above, it's the best way to support this podcast - Support on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman - Twitter: https://twitter.com/lexfridman - Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lexfridman - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman - Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LexFridmanPage - Medium: https://medium.com/@lexfridman OUTLINE: Here's the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. (00:00) - Introduction (06:31) - Introduction to psychedelics (22:33) - Psychedelics expand the mind (25:44) - The priors we bring to the psychedelic experience (29:40) - Elon Musk and first principles thinking (40:10) - DMT (51:32) - Joe Rogan and DMT (57:40) - The nature of drug addiction (1:11:29) - The economics of drug pricing (1:17:44) - Should we legalize all drugs? (1:29:46) - What is the most dangerous drug? (1:32:20) - Does drug prohibition work? (1:36:14) - Cocaine and sex (1:43:15) - Risky sexual decisions (1:54:12) - Psilocybin helping people quit smoking (2:00:30) - Young Jamie (2:22:38) - Participating in a study (2:29:57) - Psychedelics and the human mind (2:37:20) - The future of psychedelics (2:40:01) - Neuralink (2:49:33) - Consciousness (3:02:15) - Panpsychism (3:12:20) - Aliens and DMT (3:22:24) - Mortality (3:32:12) - Meaning of life

The following is a conversation with Matthew Johnson, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at John Hopkins, and is one of the top scientists in the world conducting seminal research on psychedelics. This was one of the most eye-opening and fascinating conversations I've ever had on this podcast. I'm sure I'll talk with Matt many more times. Quick mention of the sponsor followed by some thoughts related to the episode. Thank you to a new sponsor, Brave, a fast browser that feels like Chrome but has more privacy preserving features.

In Euro, the maker of functional sugar free gum and mince that I use to give my brain a quick caffeine boost. For sigmatic, the maker of delicious mushroom coffee, I'm just not realizing how ironic the set of sponsors are, and cash app, the app I use to send money to friends. Please check out these sponsors in the description to get a discount and support this podcast. As a side note, let me say that psychedelics is an area of study that is fascinating to me. In that it gives hints that much of the magic of our experience arises from just a few chemical interactions in the brain,

and that the nature of that experience can be expanded through the tools of biology, chemistry, physics, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence. The fact that a world-class scientist and researcher like Matt can apply a rigor to our study of this mysterious and fascinating topic is exciting to me beyond words. As is the case with any of my colleagues who dared to venture out into the darkness of all that is unknown about the human mind, with both an openness of first principle thinking and the rigor of the scientific method. If you enjoy this thing, subscribe to my YouTube, review it with 5 stars on Apple Podcast, follow on Spotify, support on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter and Lex Friedman.

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When you get it, you just call Lex Podcast. CashApp lets you send money to friends by bitcoin and invest in the stock market with as little as one dollar. I'm thinking of doing more conversations with folks who work in and around the cryptocurrency space. Similar to artificial intelligence, there are a lot of charlatans in this space, but there's also a lot of free thinkers and technical geniuses that are worth exploring ideas with in-depth and with care.

In general, if I make mistakes in guest selection and details in conversation, I'll keep trying to improve correct where I can and also keep following my curiosity wherever it takes me. So again, if you get cash app from the App Store Google Play and use the code Lex Podcast, you get $10 and cash app will also donate $10 to the first. An organization that is helping to advance robotics and STEM education for young people around the world. And now here's my conversation with Matthew Johnson. Can you give an introduction to psychedelics, like a whirlwind overview, maybe what are psychedelics and what are the kinds of psychedelics out there and in whatever way you find meaningful to categorize?

Yeah, you can categorize them by their chemical structure. So, fenethylamines, tripdemines, ergolines, that is less of a meaningful way to classify them. I think that they're pharmacological activity, their receptor activities, the best way. Well, let me, let me start even broader than that because they're I'm talking about the classic psychedelics. So broadly speaking, when we say psychedelic, that refers to, for most people, a broad number of compounds that work in different pharmacological ways. So it includes the so-called classic psychedelics. That includes psilocybin and salose, in which you're in mushrooms, LSD, dimethyltrip domain,

or DMT, it's an ayahuasca, people can smoke it too. Mescalin, which is in peyotein, sandpadro cactus. And those all work by hitting a certain subtype of serotonin receptor. The serotonin 2A receptor. It's the actus agonists at that receptor. Other compounds like PCP, ketamine, MDMA, iBog gain, they all are more broadly speaking, called psychedelics, but they work by very different ways pharmacologically, and they have some different effects, including subjective effects, even though there's enough of an overlap in the subjective effects that people informally refer to them as psychedelic.

I think what that overlap is compared to caffeine and cocaine and ambient, etc. Other psychoactive drugs is that they have strong effects in altering one's sense of reality and including the sense of self. And I should throw in there that cannabis, more historically like in the 70s has been called a minor psychedelic. And I think with that latter definition, it does fit that definition,

particularly if one doesn't have a tolerance. So you mentioned sir, Tony, most of the effect comes from something around like the chemistry around nutrients,mitters and so on. So it's chemical interactions in the brain or is there other kinds of interactions that have this kind of perception and self-awareness altering effects? Well, as far as we know, all of the psychedelics of all the different classes, we've talked about their major activity is caused by receptor level events. So either acting at the post receptor side of the synapse, in other words, neurotransmission operates by

one neuron releasing neurotransmitter into a synapse, a gap between the two neurons, and then the other neuron receives. They have, it has receptors that receives, and then there can be an activation caused by that. So it's like a pitcher and a catcher. So, all of the major psychedelics work by either acting as a picture, mimicking a picture or a catcher. For example, the classic psychedelics, they fit into the same catcher's mitt on the post-receptor,

post-synaptic receptor side as serotonin itself. But they do a slightly different thing to the cell, to the neuron, than serotonin does. There's a different signaling pathway after that initial activation. Something like MDMA works at the presynaptic side, the picture side, and basically it floods the synapse or the gap between the cells with a bunch of serotonin, the natural neurotransmitter. So it's like the picture in a baseball game all of a sudden just starts throwing balls like every every second Everything we're talking about is it often more natural meaning found in the natural world you mentioned cacti cactus Or is it

chemically manufactured like artificially in the lab? So the classics psychedelics. There the lab. So the classics I could tell, there's... What are the classics? So using terminology that's not chemical terminology, not like the terminology you've seen titles of papers, academic papers, but more common parlance. Right. It would be good to kind of define their effects, like how they're different. And so it includes LSD,

psilocybin, which is in mushrooms, mescaline, DMT. Which one is mescaline? Mescaline is in the different cacti. So the one most people will know is peyote, but it also shows up in San Pedro or Peruvian torch. And all of these classic psychedelics, they have, at the right dose, you know, and typically

they have very strong effects on one sense of reality and one sense of self. What some of the things that makes them different than other more broadly speaking psychedelics like MDMA and others is that they're, at least the major examples. There's some exotic ones that differ, but the ones I've talked about are extremely safe at the physiological level. Like there's like LSD and psilocybin, there's no known lethal overdose.

Unless you have like really severe, you know, heart disease, you know, because it modestly raises your blood pressure. So same person, it might be hurt, shoveling snow, we're going up the stairs, you know, that could have a, they could have a, have a cardiac event because they've taken a one of these drugs. But for most people, you know, someone could take a thousand times what the effective dose is.

And it's not going to cause any organ damage. Effect the brain stem and can stop breathing. So in that sense, you know, it's, they're freakishly safe at the physical eye. I would never call any compound safe because there's always a risk. They're freakishly safe at the physiological level. I mean, you can hardly find anything over the counter like that. I mean, aspirin's not like that caffeine is not like that. Most drugs, you take 5, 10, 20, maybe it takes 100, but you get to some times the effect

of dose and it's going to kill you. Yeah. Or call some serious damage. And so that's something that's remark about about these, most of these classic psychedelics. That's incredible, by the way, that you can go on a hell of a journey in the mind, like probably transformative, potentially in a like deeply transformative way. And yet, there's no dose that in most people would have a lethal effect. That's kind of fascinating. There's this duality between the mind and the body. It's like, it's the, okay, sorry, if I bring them up way too much, but David Goggins is like, you know, the kind of things you go on a long run, like the hell you might go through in your mind.

Your mind can take a lot, and you can go through a lot with the mind, and the body will just be its own thing. You can go through hell, but after a good night's sleep, be back to normal, and the body is always there. So bringing it back to Goggins, it's like you can do that without even destroying your knee

or whatever. Right, yes. Coming close and riding that line. That's true. So the unfortunate thing to Goggins, it's like you can do that without even destroying your knee or whatever. Right. Coming close and riding that line. That's true. So the unfortunate thing about the running, which he uses running to test the mind. So the aspect of running that is negative in order to test the mind, you really have to push the body, like take the body through a journey. I wish there was another way of doing that in the physical exercise space.

I think there are exercises that are easier in the body than others, but running sure is a hell of an effective way to do it. And one of the ways that we're differs is that you're unlike exercise, you're essentially, you know, most exercise are cut to really get to those intense levels. You really need to be persistent

about it. It will be intensive. You really out of shape just jogging for five minutes, but to really get to those intense levels, you need to have the dedication. Some of the other ways of altering subjective effects or states of consciousness take that type of dedication. Psychedelics, though, someone takes the right dose. They're strapped into the rollercoaster. And something interesting is gonna happen. And I really like what you said about that distinction between the mind or the contrast between the mind effects

and the body effects, Because I think of this. I do research with all the drugs, caffeine alcohol, methamphetamine, cocaine, alcohol, legal illegal. Most of these drugs, thinking about, say, cocaine, and methamphetamine, you can't give to a regular user. You can't safely give a dose where the regular cocaine user is gonna say, all man, that's like,

that's the strongest coke I've ever had, you know, because you get a Passe Ethics Committee and you need approval and I wouldn't want to give someone something that's dangerous. So, to go to those levels where they would say that, you would have to give something that's physiologically riskier. You know, psilocybin or LSD, you can give a dose at the physiological level. That is like very good chance. It's going to be the most intense psychological experience in that person's life.

Yeah, that's. And have zero chance for most people if you screen them of killing them. The big risk is behavioral toxicity, which is a fancy way of saying doing something stupid. I mean, you're really intoxicated. Like, if you wander into traffic or you fall from a height, just like playing people do on,

high doses of alcohol. And the other kind of unique thing about about classic psychedelics is that they're not addictive, which is pretty much unheard of when it comes to so-called drugs of abuse or drugs that people at least at some frequency choose to take. Most of what we think of as drugs, caffeine, alcohol, cocaine, cannabis. Most of these, you can get into alcohol, you can get into a daily use pattern. And that's just so unheard of with psychedelics.

Most people have taken these things on a daily basis. It's more like they're building up the courage to do it and then they build up a tolerance or yeah, they're in college and they do it on a dare. Can you take take acid seven days in a row? And that type of thing rather than a self control issue, or you haven't say, Oh, God, I got to stop taking this. I got to stop drinking every night. I got to cut down on the coke, whatever.

So that's the classic psychedelics. Uh, what are the, uh, what's a good term? Modern psychedelics or more maybe psychedelics that are created in the lab? What else is there? Right, so MDMA is the big one. And I should say that with the classic psychedelics that LSD is sort of, you can call it a semi-synthetic

because there's natural, you know, from both Urgot and in certain seeds, morning glory seeds is one example. There's a very close, there are some very close chemical relatives of LSD, so LSD is close to what occurs in nature, but not quite. But then when we get into the other non-classic psychedelics, probably the most prominent one is MDMA, people call it ecstasy, people call it Mollylly. And it is, it differs from classic psychedelics in a number of ways. It can be addictive, but not so. It's like, you can have cocaine on this

end of the continuum and classic psychedelics here. Continual addiction. Continual addiction. So it's certainly no cocaine. It's pretty rare for people to get into daily use patterns, but it's possible. And they can get into more like using once a week pattern that they where they can find it hard to stop, but it's it's somewhere in between mostly towards the to the classic sec psychedelic side in terms of like relatively little addiction potential. of relatively little addiction potential. But it's also more physiologically dangerous. I think that certainly the therapeutic use, it's showing really promising effects for treating PTSD and the models that are used. I think those are extremely acceptable when it comes to the risk-benefit ratio that you

see all throughout medicine. But nonetheless, we do know that at a certain dose and a certain frequency that MDMA can cause long-term damage to the serotonin system in the brain, so it doesn't have that level of kind of freakish bodily safety that the classic psychedelics do. And it has more of a heart load, a cardiovascular, I don't mean kind of emotion in this sense, although it is very emotional and that's something unique about its subjective effects, but it's more of a presser. And the terminology you use instead of like a freakish capacities, allowing you from a researcher perspective, but a personal perspective too of taking a journey with some of these psychedelics

that is the heroic dose as they say. So like these are tools that allow you to take a serious mental journey, whatever that is. That's what you mean. And with MDMA, there's a little bit, it starts entering this territory where you got to be careful about the risks to the body potentially. So yes, that in the sense that you can't kind of push the dose up as high as you safely, as one can, if they're in the right setting, like in our research, as they can with the, with the classics like the deluxe, but probably more importantly,

the, just the nature of the effects with MDMA, aren't the full on psychedelic. It's not the full journey. You know, so it's sort of on psychedelic. It's not the full journey. So it's sort of a psychedelic with rose colored glasses on a psychedelic that's more of it's been called more of a heart trip than a head trip. The nature of reality doesn't unravel as frequently

as it does with classic psychedelics. But you're able to more directly sense your environment. So your perceptual system still works. It's not completely detached from reality with MDMA. That's true, relatively speaking, that said, at most doses of classics, you still have a tether to reality. Changes a little bit when you're talking about smoking DMT or smoking 5-Methoxy DMT, which are some interesting examples we could talk more about. But with MDMA,

it's very rare to have what's called an ego-loss experience or is the sense of transcendental unity, where one really seemingly loses the psychological construct of the self. You know, but MDMA, it's very common for people to have this, you know, they still are perceiving themselves as a self, but it's common for them to have this warmth, this empathy for humanity and for their friends and loved ones. So it's more, and you see those effects under the classic psychedelics, but that's a subset of what the classic psychedelics do.

So I see MDMA in terms of its subjective effects, is if you think about Venn diagrams, it's sort of MDMA is all within the classic psychedelics. So everything that you see on a particular MDMA session, sometimes a psilocybin session looks just like that. But then sometimes it's completely different with psilocybin. It's a little more narrowed in terms of the variability with MDMA.

Is there something general to say about what the psychedelics do to the human mind? You mentioned kind of an ego lossloss experience in the space of Van Diagrams. If we were to draw a big circle, what can we say about that big circle? In terms of people's report of subjective experience, probably one of the most general things we can say is that it expands that range. So many people come out of these sessions saying that they didn't know it was possible to have an experience like that. So there's an emphasis on the subjective experience that is there words that people put to it

that capture that experience or is it something that just has to be experienced? Yeah, people, as a research, that's an interesting question because you have to kind of measure the effects of this and how do you convert that into numbers? That's the ultimate challenge. Is that even possible? To one, convert it into words, and the second, convert the words into numbers somehow. So we do a lot of that with questionnaires, some of which are very psychometrically validated, so lots of numbers have been crunched on them. And there's always a limitation with questionnaires. I mean, subjective effects are subjective effects. Ultimately, it's what the person is reporting, and that doesn't necessarily point towards

a ground truth. So for example, if someone says that they felt like they touched another dimension, or they felt like they sensed the reality of God, or if they, you know, I mean, just you name it, people's ontological views can sometimes shift. I think that's more about where they're coming from, and I don't think it's the quintessential way in which they work. There's plenty of people that hold onto a completely naturalistic viewpoint and have profound and helpful experiences with these compounds. But the subjective effects can be so broad

that for some people, it shifts their philosophical viewpoint at more towards idealism, more towards thinking of that the nature of reality might be more about consciousness than about material. That's a domain I'm very interested in. Right now we have essentially zero to say about that in terms of validating those types of claims, but it's even interesting just to see what people say along those lines. You're interested in saying like, can we more rigorously study this process of expansion. Like, what do we mean by this expansion of your sense of what is possible in the experiences in this world? Right. As much as what we can say about that

through naturalistic psychology, right, especially as much as we can root it to solid psychological constructs and solid neuroscientific constructs. And I wonder what the impact is of the language that you bring to the table. So you mentioned about God or speaking of God, a lot of people are really into sort of theoretical physics these days at a very surface level. And you can bring the language of physics, right? You can talk about quantum mechanics. You can talk about general relativity and curvature of space time and using just that language without a deep technical understanding of it to somehow start thinking like sort of visualizing atoms in your head and somehow

through that process because you have the language using that language to kind of dissolve the ego like realize like that we're just all little bits of physical objects that behave in mysterious ways. And so that has to do with the language, like if you read a Sean Carroll book or something recently, it seems like as a huge influence on the way you might experience, my perceived the world, and my experience, the alteration that psychedelics brings to the, to the your perception system. So I wonder like the language you bring to the table, how that affects the journey you go on with the psychedelics.

I think very much so. And I think there's, I'm a little concerned, some of the science is going a little too far in the direction of around the edges, you know, speaking about it changing beliefs in this sense or that sense about particular, in particular domains. And I think what really what, a lot of what's going on is what you just discussed, it's the priors coming into it. So if you've been reading a lot of physics, then you might bring up space time and interpret the experience in that sense. I mean, it's not uncommon for people to come out talking about visions of the... It's not the most typical thing, but it's come up in sessions. I've guided the Big Bang and this sort of nature of reality.

I think probably the best way to think about these experiences is that, and the best evidence, even though we're in our infancy and understanding it, they really tap into more general psychological mechanisms. I think one of the best arguments is they reduce the influence of our priors, of what we bring into all of the assumptions that we all have, essentially especially as adults, we're riding on top of heuristic after heuristic to get through life. And you need to do that. And that's a good thing, and that's extremely efficient. And evolution has shaped that. But that comes out in expense. And it seems that these experiences will allow someone greater mental flexibility and

openness. And so one can be both less influenced by their prior assumptions, but still nonetheless, the nature of the experience can be influenced by what they've been exposed to in the world. And sometimes they can get it in a deeper way. Like maybe they've read, I mean, I had a philosophy professor at one time as a participant in a hydro psilocybin study, and he's like, I remember him saying, my God, it's like, hegel's opposite to finding each other. Like I get it.

I taught this thing for years and years and years. Like I get it now. And so like that, you know, and even at the psychological, emotional level, like the cancer patients we worked with, you know, they told themselves a million times over the people trying to quit smoking. I need to quit smoking. Oh, I'm ruining my life, but this cancer, I'm still healthy, I should be getting out,

I'm letting this thing defeat me. It's like, yeah, you told yourself that in your head, but sometimes they had these experiences and they kind of feel it in their heart. Like they really get it. So in some sense that you bring some price to the table, but psychedelics allow you to acknowledge them and then throw them away. So like one popular terminology around this in the engineering space is first principles

thinking that Elon Musk, for example, espouse, is a lot. Let me ask a fun question before we return to a more serious discussion with Elon Musk as an example, but it could be just engineers in general. Do you think there's a use for psychedelics to take a journey of rigorous first principles thinking? So like throwing away, we're not talking about throwing away assumptions about the nature of reality in terms of like our philosophy of the way

we live day to day life, but we're talking about like how to build a better rocket or how to build a better car or how to build a better social network or all those kinds of things, engineering questions. I absolutely think there's huge potential there. And it's there was some research in the late 60s, early 70s that were, it was very early and not very rigorous in terms of methodology,

but it was consistent with the, I mean, they're just countless anecdotes of folks. I mean, people have argued that just, you know, Silicon Valley was largely influenced by psychedelic experience. I remember the, I think the, the person that came up with the concept of free wear or share wear, it's like it kind of was generated, you know, out of, or influenced by psychedelic experience, you know,

so to this, I think there's incredible potential there. And we know really next there's no rigorous research on that but. Is there any doodle stuff like with Steve Jobs? I think there's stories, right? In your exploration of that, is there something a little bit more than just stories? Is there like a little bit more of a solid data points, even if they're just experiential, like anecdotes, is there something that you draw inspiration from, like, in your intuition?

Because we'll talk about you're trying to construct studies that are more rigorous around these questions. But is there something you draw inspiration from the past from the 80s and the 90s and so com Valley, that kind of space. Or is it just like you have a sense based on everything you've learned and these kind of loose stories that there's something worth digging at? I am influenced by the gosh that the just incredible number of anecdotes surrounding these. I mean, Carrie Mollis, he invented PCR. I mean, absolutely revolutionized biological sciences. He says he wouldn't have won the Nobel Prize firm, and said he wouldn't have come up with that. How do you not

had psychedelic experiences? You know, now he's an interesting character. People should read his autobiography because you could point to other things he was into. But I think that speaks to the casting your nets wide and this mental flex. More of these general mechanisms where sometimes if you cast your nets really wide, and it's going to depend on the person and their influences, but sometimes you come up with false positives. You know, you know, you connect the dots where maybe you shouldn't have connected those dots, but it, I think

that can be constrained and so much of our, not only are personal psychological suffering, but are limitations academically and in terms of technology, are because of the self-imposed limitations and heuristics, these entrenched ways of thinking. You know, like, you know, those examples throughout the history of science where someone has come up with a rat, the paradigm, Kun's paradigm shifts. It's like, here's something completely different. You know, this doesn't make sense by any of the previous models. We need more of those.

You need the right balance between that because so many novel, crazy ideas are just bunk. That's what science is about separating them from the valid paradigm shifting ideas. We need more paradigm shifting ideas in a big way. And I think you could argue that we've, because of the structure of academia and science in modern times, it heavily biases against those. Right, there's all kinds of mechanisms

in our human nature that resist paradigm shift, quite sort of obviously. So, and psychedelics, there could be a lot of other tools, but it seems like psychedelics could be one set of tools that encourage paradigm shifting thinking. So like the first principle is kind of thinking. So there's a kind of, you're at the forefront of research here. There's just kind of anecdotal stories. There's early studies. There's a sense that we don't understand very much,

but there's a lot of depth here. How do we get from there to where Elon and I can regularly, like I wake up every morning and have deep work sessions where it's well understood like what dose to take. Like if I want to explore something where it's all legal, where it's all understood and safe,

all that kind of stuff, how do we get from where we are today to there? Not speaking in terms of legality in the sense like policy making all that like laws and stuff, meaning like how do we scientifically understand this stuff well enough to get to a place where I can just take it safely in order to expand my thinking, like this kind of first principles thinking, which I mean my personal life currently doing like, how do I revolutionize particular several things?

Like, it seems like the only tools I have right now, it's just, just, but my mind going doing the first principles, like, wait, wait, wait. Okay. Why has this been done this way? Can we do it completely differently? It seems like I'm still tethered to the priors that I bring to the table and they keep trying to untether myself. Maybe there's tools that can systematically help me untether.

Yeah. Well, we need experiments, you know, when that's tied to kind of the policy level stuff. And I should be clear, I would never encourage anyone to do anything illicitly. But yeah, you know, in the future, we could see these compounds used for technical and scientific innovation. What we need are studies that are digging into that right now, most of what the funding, which is largely from philanthropy, not from the government, largely what it's for is treatment of mental disorders like addiction and depression, et cetera.

But we need studies. One of the early initial stabs on this question decades ago was they took some architects and engineers and said, what problems have you been working on? Where have you been stuck for months, like working on this damn thing and you're not getting anywhere, like your heads budding up against the wall. So I come in here, taken, I think it was 100 micrograms of LST. So not a big session.

And a little bit different model where they were actually working. It was a modern enough dose where they could work on the problem during the session. And a little bit different model where they were actually working. It was a modern enough dose where they could work on the problem during the session. I think probably I'm an empiricist so I'd like to see all the studies done. But the first thing I would do is like a really high dose session where you're not necessarily in front of your, you know, computer, you know, which you can't really do on a really high dose. And then the work has been talked about like you take a really high dose, you take a journey, and then the breakthroughs come from when you return from the journey and like integrate, quote unquote, that experience.

I think that's where the whole, again, we're babies at this point, but my gut tells me, yeah, that it's the so-called integration, the aftermath. We know that there's some different forms of neuroplasticity that are unfolding in the days following a psychedelic, at least in animals. Probably going on humans, we don't know if that's related to the therapeutic effects. My gut tells me it is, although it's only part of the story, but we need big studies where we compare people, like let's get a hundred people like that, scientists that are working on a problem, and then randomize them to, and then I think you need a even more credible, you know, active controls or active placebo conditions to kind of tease this out. And then also in conjunction with that, you can do this in the same study. You want

to combine that with more rigorous sort of experimental models where we actually get there of problem solving tasks that we know, for example, that you tend to do better on after you've gotten a good night's sleep versus not. And my sense is there's a relationship there. You know, people go back to first principles, you know, questioning those first principles they're operating under and, you know, getting away from their priors in terms of creative problem solving. And so you, you, I think, wrap those things and you could speak a little more rigorously about those because ultimately, if everyone's bringing their own problem, that's, that's, I think that's more in the face of all its side, but you can't dig

in as much and get as much experimental power and speak to the mechanisms as you can with having everyone do the same sort of, you know, canned problem solving tasks. So, we've been speaking about psychedelics generally. Is there one you find from the scientific perspective, or maybe even philosophical perspective, most fascinating to study. They're putically most interested in psilocybin and LSD, and I think we needed to do a lot more with LSD because it's mainly been psilocybin in the modern era. I've recently gotten a grant from the Heftar Research Institute to do an LSD study, so I haven't started it yet, but I'm going through the paperwork and everything.

They're a putic meaning. There's some issue in you trying to treat that issue. Right. Right. In terms of just like what's the most fascinating, you know, understanding the nature of these experiences, if you really want to like wrap your head around what's going on when someone has a completely altered sense of reality and sense of self. They are, I think, you're talking about the high dose, either smoked vaporized or intravenous injection, which all kind of, they're very similar pharmacologically

of DMT and five methoxy DMT. This is like when people, this is what I know if you're familiar with, Terence McKinney, he would talk a lot about smoking DMT Joe Rogan has talked a lot about that. People will say that and there's a close relative called five methoxy DMT. Most people who know the terrain will say that's, that's an order of magnitude or orders of magnitude beyond. I mean, anything one could get from even a high dose of psilocybin or LSD. I think it's a question about whether, you know, how therapeutic, I think there is a therapeutic potential there, but it's probably not as sure of a bet because one goes so far out.

It's almost like they're not contemplating their relationship in their direction and life, they are like, reality is ripping apart at the seams and the very nature of the self and of the sense of reality. And the amazing thing about these compounds, and in same, to a less degree with the, with oral cell, cyber, and LSD, is that unlike some other drugs that really throw you far out there, anesthetics, and even alcohol like it,

as realities starts to become different at higher doses, there's this numbing. There's this sort of, there's this ability for the sense of being the center, having a conscious experience that's memorable that is maintained throughout these classic psychedelic experiences like one can go as far so far out while still being aware of the experience and remembering the experience. Interesting. So being able to carry something back.

experience. Interesting. So, being able to carry something back. Right. Can you dig in a little deeper like what is DMT? How long is the trip usually like how much do we understand about it? Is there something interesting to say about just the nature of the experience and what we understand about it? One of the common methods for people to use is to smoke it or vaporize it.

And it usually takes, and this is a pretty good kind of description of what it might feel like on the ground. The caveat is it's a completely insufficient description and someone's going to be listening. It was done as it's like nothing you could say is going to come close. But it'll take about three big hits in halacians in order to have what people call a breakthrough dose. And there's no great definition of that. But basically meaning moving away from, you know, not just having the typical psilocybin or LSD experience where things are radically different, but you're still basically a person in this reality to go in somewhere else. And so that will typically take like three hits.

And this stuff comes on like a freight train. So one takes a hit and around the time of the first exhalation, we're talking about a few seconds in, or maybe just sometime between the first and the second hit, it'll start to come on. And they're already up to, say, what they might get from a 30 milligram or 300 microgram LSD trip, a big trip. They're already there at the second hit, but they're going, they're consciousness is geared, this is like acceleration, not speed, to speak of physics, okay? It's like, those are receptors are getting filled like that,

and they're going from zero to 60 in like Tesla time. And at the second hit, again, they're at this, maybe the strongest psychedelic experience they've ever had. And then if they can take that third hit, and some people can't, they're, I mean, they're propelled into this other reality. And the nature of that other reality will differ depending on who you ask, but folks will often talk and we've done some survey research on this, entities of different types, elves,

tend to pop up. The caveat is I strongly presume all of this is culturally influenced, but thinking more about the psychology and the neuroscience, there is probably something fundamental, you know, like for someone that might be colored as elves, others, it might be colored as, um, I don't know, Terence McKinnon called himself dribbling basketballs. For someone else, it might be little animals or someone else, it might be aliens. Um, I think that probably is dependent on who they are and what they've been exposed to. But just the fact that one has this sense that they're surrounded by autonomous entities. Right.

Intelligent autonomous entities. Right. And people come back with stories that are just astonishing. Like, there's communication between these entities and often they're telling them things that the person says are self validating, but it seems like it's impossible. Like, it really seems like, and again, this is what people say oftentimes, that it's, it really is like downloading some intelligence from higher dimension or some whatever metaphor you want to use. Sometimes these things come up in dreams where it's like someone is exposed to something

that I've had this in a dream, you know, where it seems like what they are being exposed to is physically impossible, but yet at the same time self-validating, it seems true. Like they really are figuring something out. Of course, the challenge is to say something in concrete terms after the experience that where you could verify that in any way. And I'm not familiar with any examples of that. Well, there's a sense in which I suppose the experience is like, There's a sense in which I suppose the experience is like, you're a limited cognitive creature that knows very little about the world. And here's a chance to communicate with much wiser entities

that in a way that you can't possibly understand are trying to give you hints of deeper truths. And so there's that kind of sense that you can take something back, but you can't. Where our cognition is not capable to fully grasp the truth, we'll just get a kind of sense of it. And somehow that process is mind-expanding, that there's a greater truth out there. That seems like what from the people I've heard talk about, that seems to be what it is. And that's so fascinating that there's fundamentally to this whole thing is a communication between an entity that is other than yourself, entities. So it's not just like a visual experience,

like you're like floating through the world, is there's other beings there, which is kind of, I don't know, I don't know what to sort of, from a person who likes Freud and Carl Jung, I don't know what to think about that. That being of course, from one perspective, is just you looking in the mirror. But it could also course from one perspective is just you looking in the mirror,

but it could also be from another perspective like actually talking to other beings. Yeah, and you mentioned young and I think that's he's particularly interesting and it kind of points to something I was thinking about saying is that I think what might be going on from a naturalistic perspective, so regardless, whether or not there are, it doesn't depend on autonomous entities out there. What might be happening is that just the associative net, the level of learning, the comprehension might be so beyond what someone is used to, that the only way for the

nervous system, for the aware sense of self to orient towards it is all by metaphor. And so I do think, you know, when we get into these realms as a strong empiricist, I think we always got to be careful and be as grounded as possible, but I'm also willing to speculate and sort of cast and that's wide with caveat. But I think of things like archetypes and it's plausible that there are certain stories, there's certain, we've gone through millions

of years of evolution. It may be that we have certain characters and stories that are sort of that are central nervous system are sort of wired to tend to. Yeah, those stories that we carry those stories in us. Right. And the sun locks them in a certain kind of way. And we think about stories like our sense of self is basically narrative self is a story. And we think about The world of stories. This is why metaphors are always more powerful than

You know, sort of laying out all the details all the time, you know speaking in parables It's like if you really get so you know, this is why as much as I hate it You know if you're presenting to Congress or something and you have all the the best data in the world It's not as powerful as that one anecdote as you're presenting to Congress or something and you have all the best data in the world. It's not as powerful as that one anecdote as as as the mom dying of cancer that had the psilocybin session and it transformed her life. You know, that's a story that's meaningful. And so when this kind of unimaginable kind of change and and experience happens with a DMT ingestion

it These stories of entities they might they might be that you know stories that are constructed that it is the the closest which is not to say the stories aren't real. I mean, I think we're getting the layers where What is really right? Yeah, yeah, but it's the closest we can come to making sense of it because I do what we do know about the psychedelics, one of the levels beyond the receptor is that the brain is communicating it with itself in a massively different way. There's massive communication with areas that don't normally communicate. And so it, I think that comes with both, it's casting the nets wide.

I think that comes with the insights and helpful novel ways of thinking. I do think it comes with false positives, you know, that could be some of the delusion. And so, you know, when you're so far out there, like with a DMATT experience like maybe alien is the the best way that the mind can wrap some arms around that. So I don't know how much you're familiar with Joe Rogan. He does bring up DMT quite a bit. It's almost a meme. It is a name. Have you ever heard what it's a have you ever tried DMT? I mean, I think he talks about this experience of having met other entities and they were mocking him, I think, if I remember the experience correctly, like laughing at him and saying, FU or something like that, I may be misremembering

this, but there's a general mockery and what he learned from that experience is that he shouldn't take himself too seriously. So it's the dissolution of the ego and so on. What do you think about that experience? Maybe if you have more general things about Joe's infatuation with DMT, and if DMT has that important role to play in popular culture in general. I'm definitely familiar with it. I remember telling you all flying that when I first, the first time I learned who Joe Rogan was, it's probably 15 years ago and I came upon a clip and I realized there's another person in the world who's in the both DMT and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. And I think both those worlds have grown dramatically since and that's probably not such a special club these days.

So he definitely, you know, got onto my radar screen quickly. You weren't to both before it was cool. Right. I mean, it's all relative because there's people that were, you know, before the late 90s and early 2000s, they were into it and say, you know, you're a Johnny cum lately. But, but yeah, compared to where we're at now. But yet, one of the things always found fascinating by, by Joe's, you know, telling of his experience, experiences, I think, is that they resemble very much Terence McKenna's experiences with DMT and Joe was talked very much about Terence McKenna and his experiences. If I had to guess, I would

guess that probably just having heard Terence McKenna talk about his experiences, that Joe's, that that influenced the coloring of Joe's experience. Yeah, it's funny. It's funny how that works, because I mean, that's why Mekana has an, I mean, poets and great orders give us the words to then like start to describe our experiences, because our words are limited, our language is limited, and it's always nice to get some kind of nice poetry into the mix to allow us to put words to it.

Right. And he, but I also see some elements that, that, that seem to relate to Joe's psychology get just from what I've seen him, you know, from hours of, of watching him on his podcast is that, you know, he's a self critical guy. Yes. And I think with always his positive, and I'm always struck being a behavioral pharmacologist and no one else really says it about cannabis. I'll get back to the D&T thing about he likes

the kind of the paranoid side of things. He's like that's you radically examining yourself. It's like that's not just a bad thing. That's you need to like look hard at yourself and something's making you uncomfortable like dig into that. And like that's his, it's sort of along the lines of goggins with exercise. And it's his, it's sort of along the lines of Goggins with exercise and it's like, yeah, like things,

learning experiences aren't supposed to be easy. Like take advantage of these uncomfortable experiences. It's why we call in our research in a safe context with psychedelics, they're not bad trips, they're challenging experiences. Nice, yes. So, yeah, it's fascinating, just that's the tiny tangent. It's always cool for me to hear him talk about

Marijuana like weed as the paranoia the anxiety whatever that the experience as actually the the Fuel for the experience like I think he talks about smoking weed when he's writing That's inspiring to me because then you can't possibly have a bad experience. I mean, he's fan of that. Like every experience is good. Right, which is very Goggins.

Yeah, it's very Goggins. Yeah, is it bad? Okay, all right, great, you know? Well, see, Goggins is one side of that. He wants it bad. Like, he wants the experience to be challenging always. But I mean, like like both are good like the few times I've taken mushrooms the experience was

Like everything was beautiful. There's zero challenging aspect to it. It was just like the world is beautiful and it gave me this deep appreciation of the world I would say so like that's amazing, but also ones that challenge you are also amazing like all the time to drink vodka, but but that's another, let's not so back to DMT. Yeah, and Joe's treating cannabis as a psychedelic, which is something that I'd say, like not a lot of people treat it more like Xanax or like beer. Yes.

You know, or vodka. But he's really trying to delve into those, the miners, it's been called a minor psychedelic. So with DMT, you know, as you brought up, it's like the entities mocking him. And it's like, you're not, I mean, this reminds me of him, you know, him describing his, like, you know, writing his, or just his entire method of comedy. It's like, watch the tape of yourself. You know, don't just ignore it. Like, that's where I screwed up.

That's where I need to do better. This, like, sort of radical self-examination, which I think our society is kind of getting away from because, like, you know, all the children win trophies, type of thing. And it's like, no, no, no. Don't go overboard, but like, recognize when you've messed up. And so, like, that's a big part of the psychedelic experience. Like, people come out sometimes saying,

my God, I need to say sorry to my mom. Yeah. You know, like, it's so obvious. Like, or whatever, you know, interpersonal issue or like, my God, I don't, I'm not pulling enough weight around the house and helping my wife. And, you know, you know, these things that are just obvious to them, the self-criticism that can be a very positive thing if you act on it. You've mentioned addiction. Maybe we could take a little bit detour into a darker aspect of things, or not even darker. It's just an important aspect of things.

What's the nature of addiction? You've mentioned some things within Big umbrella of psychedelics. Maybe you're usually not addictive, but maybe MDMA, I think you said, might have some addictive properties, but the point is stuff outside of the psychedelic, sombrella can often be highly addictive. So you've studied addiction from several angles, one of which is behavioral economics. What have you understood about addiction? What is addiction from the biological, physiological level to the psychological,

to whatever is the interesting way to talk about addiction. Yeah, and the lenses that I view addiction through very much our behavior like anemic, but I also think they converge on, I think it's beautiful at the other end of the spectrum, sort of just a completely humanistic psychology perspective. And it converges on what people come out of, you know, 12-step meetings talking about.

Can you say what is behavioral economics and what is humanistic psychology? Like, what do you mean by that? More importantly, behavioral economics lens. What is that? So behavioral economics, my definition of it is the application of economic principles, mostly micro economic principles. So understanding the behavior of individual agents surrounding commodities in the marketplace,

applying micro economic types of analyses to non-economic behavior. So basically at one point, like psychologists figured out that there's this whole other discipline that's been studying behavior, it just happened to be all focused on monetary behavior, spending, and saving money, et cetera. But it comes with all of these principles that can be wildly and fruitfully applied to understanding behavior. So for example, I've studied things like demand curve analysis of drug consumption. So I look at, for example, the tobacco cigarettes and nicotine products through the lens of demand curves. In other words, at different prices,

if there's different work requirements for being able to smoke cigarettes, sort of modeling price. Within that price data, there is some indication of addiction. How much you, the habits that you form around these particular drugs? Yeah, it's one important dimension.

So I think a particularly important one there is elasticity or inelasticity, you know, two ends of the spectrum. So that's the price sensitivity. So so for example, you could have something that's pretty price, um, uh, inelastic, like, like gasoline. So the price of gas at times can keep going up and Americans are just gonna pretty much, you know, buy the same amount of gas.

Or maybe, you know, the price of gas doubles, but their consumption only decreases by 10%. So it's a sub-proportional reduction. So that's an inelastic. And that changes, like you push the price up high enough, I mean, if it was $100 a gallon, it would eventually turn, the curve would turn and go downward more drastically and it would be elastic. But you can apply that to someone, you know, someone who regular cigarette smoker who

was working for cigarette puffs, who has, who's gone six hours without smoking and you're asking questions like, yeah, how many times are they willing to pull this knob in the lab during this three hour session? I do a lot of work like this in order to earn a cigarette. How does the how does the content of nicotine in that affect it? How's the availability of nicotine replacement products like nicotine gum or e-cigarettes affect those those decisions? So you can it's a certain lens of it's sort of a way to take the kind of the classic those decisions. So you can, it's a certain lens of it's sort of a way to take the kind of the classic behavioral psychology definition of reinforcement, which is just basically reward. How much is this a good thing? And it kind of breaks that apart into a multi-dimensional space. So it's not just the idea is reward or reinforcement is not unidimensional. So for example, you can unpack that with demand curves.

At a cheap price, you might prefer one good to another. So the classic example is luxury versus necessity. So diamonds versus toilet paper. So at those cheap prices, you can look at something called intensity of demand. If it was basically as cheap as possible, or essentially zero, how much would you buy of this good? But then you keep jacking up the price, and you'll see, so diamonds will look like the better reward at that low price or intensity of demand side of things.

But as you keep jacking up the price, you got to have some toilet paper. And again, we can get into the whole, like, the day thing, but forget that, you know, like, I know, Joe's been pushing that too. But, you know, you're gonna hang on and keep buying the toilet paper to a greater degree than you will, the diamonds. So you'll see a crossing of demand curves. So what's the better reinforcer?

What's the better reward? Depends on your price, you know? And so that's one, that's an example of one way to, in that of look at addiction. So specifically drug consumption, which isn't all of addiction, but it's like in order for something to be addictive, it has to be a reward.

And it has to compete with other rewards in your life. And one of the two main aspects of addiction in my in my view and this doesn't map on to how the you know the DSM the psychiatry Bible defines addiction which I think is largely bunk you know but there's some value to have some common description but it's you know how rewarding is it from this multi-dimensional lens. And specifically, how does that rewarding value compete with other rewards, other consequences in your life? So it's not a problem if the use of that substance is rewarding.

You know, okay, yeah, you like to have a couple beers every once in a while. It's like not a problem. But then you have the alcoholic who is drinking so much that they they're tanks their career. It ruins their marriage. It's in competition with these pro-social aspects to their life. It's all about compared to the other choices you're making, the other activities in your life.

And if it you evaluate as a much higher reward, then anything else that becomes an addiction. Right, right. And so it's not just the rewarding value, but it's the relative rewarding value. And in the other major, again, from behavioral economics, the thing that makes addiction is something called delayed discounting. So in economics, sometimes it's called time preference. It's what compound interest rates are based upon.

It's the idea that delaying a good access to a good or a reward comes with a certain decrement to its value. So we'd all rather have things now than later. And we can study this at the individual level of, would you rather have $9 today or $10 tomorrow? And when you do that, you get huge differences between addicted populations and non-addicted, not just heroin and cocaine,

but just cigarette smuckers, like normal everyday cigarette smokers. And even when you look at something like the monetary rewards, and so you can go into the rabbit hole with this delayed discounting model. So it's not only those huge differences that seem to have a face valid aspect to it. Like the cigarette smoker is choosing this thing that's rewarding today, but I know it comes with increased risk of having these horrible consequences down the line. So it's this competition between what's good for me now and what's good for me later.

And the other aspect about delayed discounting is that if you quantitatively map out that discounting curve over time, so you don't just do the, you know, how much, you know, that $10 tomorrow, how much is it worth to today? So you can say, what about nine, what about eight, what about seven dollars? And you can titrate it to find that in difference point. And so we can say, aha, $6, $10 tomorrow is worth $6 to today. so it's by the one day, it's decreased by 40%. We can do that also at one week and one month and one year and 10 years and map out that curve, get a shape of that curve.

One of the fascinating things about this is that whether you're talking about pigeons, making these types of choices between a little bit of food now or a little bit of food a minute from now or rats, or like dozens of species of animals tested, including humans, the tendency is pretty consistently that we discount hyperbolicly rather than exponentially. And what exponentially means is that every unit of time is associated with the same proportional reduction. Every unit of time is associated with the same proportional

reduction, every unit of delay is associated with the same causes of the same proportional reduction and value. And that's the way the compound interest rate works. Every day, you get this sort of out of whatever values in there at the beginning of that day, you get this, you know, will give you this amount of extra money to compensate you for that delay. But then the way that all animals tend to function is of this very different way where the reductions, the initial, that initial delay, so like one day's worth of delay. You see a much stronger discounting rate or reduction in value. Then you do over those. So you see the super proportional, then it changes to

these lesser rates. And so the implication of that, and I've gone like really into the weeds quantitatively, but what that means is that there's these preference reversals. When you have curves of that nature, the decay that's hyperbolic, it maps on to this phenomenon. We see both in terms of how people deal with future rewards, but also how perception works. When two things are far away, whether it's physical distance or whether it's in terms of perception or whether it's in terms of time, when you're are far away, whether it's physical distance or whether it in terms of perception or whether it's in terms of time, when you're really far away, the value, the subjective value for that further, that delayed reward is larger. So for example, like, let's say we're talking about 360, 364 days from now you can get $9 or 365 days a year. Now you get $10 and you're like, it's like, it's a year, like no difference. Like, I'll

take, why not get one more dollar? Yeah. You bring that same exact set of choices closer. Nothing's changed other than the time to both rewards. And it's like, would you rather have $9 today or $10 tomorrow? And plenty of people would say, ah, just about the sounds, go ahead and take it today. So you see this preference reversal. And so that is that's a model of addiction in the sense that consistently with true addiction, I would argue, you see this competition between molar and molecular utility. It's like inter-personal, like within the person competing agents. Someone sometimes has control of the bus that wants to do what's good for you in the

short term, and someone, I don't know, other times is a control of driving the bus and they want to do what's good for you in the long term. So you tell the, you know, you're trying to quit and you see a doctor, you see your, you know, 12-step therapist and say, God, I know this stuff is killing me. Like, I'm really, I'm on the path, I'm like, I'm done. And that's when you're kind of in their office or wherever you're not, you know, it's not around you. And then'm on the path, I'm like, I'm done. And that's when you're kind of in their office or wherever you're not, you know, it's not around you. And then later on that day, your buddy says, that, hey man, I just scored, I got it right here,

D1 it and that reward is right in front of you. That's like bringing those two choices right in front of you. And it's like, hell yeah, I wanna use. And then you can go through that cycle for like years of the person telling themselves, I wanna quit. But then other times that same person is saying, I don't want to, you know, functionally they're saying, I don't want to because they're saying, yeah, like, yeah, give me some. So in the moment,

it's very difficult to quit. And this isn't just something, this is something that has his huge clinical ramifications with addiction, but it's like all humans do it. Anyone who's had hit the snooze alarm in the morning like the night before they realize Oh, I got to get up extra early tomorrow. That's what's ultimately better for me. So I'm gonna set the alarm for you know, five a.m Yes and they It goes off at five a.m

You know, and then it's so now there's two Consequences have come sooner and it's like what hell? And they hit the snooze alarm. And sometimes not just once, but then five minutes later and five minutes later. And it's why it's easier to exercise self-control at the grocery store compared to in your fridge. Like if that snack is like 30 seconds away in your fridge, you're gonna more likely yield to temptation than if it

is further away. So then to take a step back to something you brought up earlier the in the last city of pricing. Is it from a perspective of the dealers, whether we're talking about cigarettes or maybe venturing slightly into the illegal realm of people selling drugs illegally, they also have an economics to them that they said prices and all those kinds of things. Does addiction allow you to mess with the nature of pricing. So I kind of assume that you meant that there's a correlation between things you're addicted to and the inelasticity of the price. So you can jack up the price.

Is there something interesting to be said, both for legal drugs and illegal drugs about the kind of price games you can play because the consumers of the product are addicted. Right. I mean, I think you just described it. Yeah, you can jack up the price and some people are going to drop off, but the people, you know, and it's not dichotomous because you could just consume less, but some people

are going to consume less and the people that are most addicted are going to keep, you know, and it's not dichotomous because you could just consume less. But some people are gonna consume less and the people that are most addicted are gonna keep, you know, I mean, you see this, they're gonna keep purchasing. So you see this with cigarettes. And so it's interesting when you interface this with policy, like in one respect, heavily taxing cigarettes is a good thing.

We know it keeps, you know, add lessons, particularly price sensitive. So you definitely, people smoke smoke less and especially kids smoke less when you keep cigarette prices high and you tax the hell out of them. But one of the downsides you've got to balance and keep in mind is that you disproportionately have working class poor people. And then you get into a point where someone's spending, you know, a quarter of their paycheck on. So they're going to smoke no matter what.

And basically because they're addicted, they're going to smoke no matter what and usually, yeah, you're, you're taxing their existence. Right. So you're making it worse for, if they don't, if they are completely inelastic, you're actually making that person's life worse. Yeah. Because we know that that by, by interfering with the amount of money they have, you're interfering with the other pro-social, the potential competitors to smoking. And we know that when someone's in more impoverished environments and they have less sort of non-drug alternatives, the more likely they're going to stay addicted.

know, the more likely they're going to stay addicted. So, you know, is there a data is interesting from a scientific perspective of those same kind of games in illegal drugs? Sort of, because that's where most drug, I was at me, I don't know, maybe you can correct me, but it seems like most drugs are currently illegal. So, but they're still in economics to them, obviously, as the drug war and so on. Is there data on the setting of prices or how good are the business people running the selling of drugs that are illegal? Are they all the same kind of rules apply from a behavioral economics perspective? I think so.

I mean, they're basically where they're crunching the numbers or not, they're basically sensitive to that demand curve. And they're doing the same thing that businesses do in a legal market. And you want to sell as much of a product to get as much money. You're looking more at the total income.

So if you jack the price a little bit, you're going to get some reduction in consumption, but it may be that the total amount of money that you rake in is going to be more than it's going to overcompensate for that. So you're willing to take, okay, I'm going to lose 10% of my customers, but I'm getting more, you know, more than enough to compensate from that, from the extra money from the people who still are buying. So I think they're more, you know, and especially when we get to the lower, I wouldn't be surprised if people are crunching those numbers and looking at demand curves, maybe at the, you know, at the really high levels of the, you know, up the chain, the cartels and one. I don't know. That wouldn't

surprise me at all, but I think it's probably more implicit at the lower levels where something you brought up drug policy, I will say that for years now it's been this kind of unquestioned goal. By, for example, the drugs are office in the US to make the price of illegal drugs as high as possible without this kind of nuanced approach that. Yeah, if you make, you know, for some people, if you, you know, if you make the price so high, you're actually making things worse. I mean, I'm all about reducing the problems associated with drugs and drug addictions. And part of that is that are more direct consequences of those drugs themselves. And, but a whole lot is what you get from indirectly and, you know,

both for the individual and for society. So, like, making a poor person who doesn't have enough money for their kids, making them even pours. And now you've made their children's future worse because they're growing up in deeper poverty because you've essentially levied attacks onto this person who's heavily addicted, but then at the societal level, so everything we know about the drug war in terms of the heavy criminalization and filling up prisons and reducing employment and educational opportunities, which in the big picture, we know are the things that in a free market compete against some of the worst problems of addiction is actually having educational and employment opportunities, but when you get give someone a felony, for example, you're pretty much guaranteeing they're never going to go very high on the economic ladder. And so you're making drugs a better reward for that person's future.

a better reward for that person's future. So this is a quick step into the policy around, and I think for both you and I, I'm not sure you can correct me, but I'm more comfortable into studying the effects of drugs on the human behavior and human psychology versus like policy. It seems like I got the whole giant mess, but you know, there's some libertarian candidates for president and just libertarian thinkers that had a nice thought experiment of possibly legalizing, I was spoken about possibly legalizing basically all drugs in your intuition. Do you think a world where all drugs are legal is a safer world or less safe world for the users of those drugs? It really depends on what we mean by legalization. So this is one of my beefs with this, you know, how these things are talked about. I mean, we have very few completely laissez-faire legal drugs. So even caffeine is one of the few examples. So for example, caffeine and tea and coffee is in that realm. Like,

there's no limits, no one's testing, there's no laws, regulation at any level of how much caffeine you're allowed to buy or how much in a product. But even like with this Starbucks like Nitro, there are rules with soda and with canned products, you can only put so much. Yeah. Yeah, so this is FDA regulated. And it's kind of weird because there's a limit to sodas that's not there for energy drinks and other things.

But, you know, so even caffeine, it depends on what product we're talking about. Like, if you're like no-dose and other caffeine products over the counter, like you can't just put 800 milligrams in there the pills are like one or 200 milligrams and so it's FDA regulate as no recount drug some of the most dangerous drugs in society. I would say arguably one of the most dangerous class of drugs of the volatile anesthetics, huffing people huffing gasoline and you know airplane glue, toluene, whatnot. plane glue, toluene, whatnot, severely damaging to the nervous system. Pretty much legal, but there's some regulation in the sense that there's a warning label, like it's legal to do it for not that it's people, they're busting people for this, but it's against federal law to use this in a way other than intended type of,. Like, yeah, don't huff this, you know, your paint dinner, or whatnot.

At least keeps people from selling it for that. Like, no, because they're gonna go after that person. They're not gonna be able to find the 12 year old who's huffing. So anyway, just as some extreme examples at the end, and then, you know, even the so-called illegal, like schedule one drug, psilocybin. We do plan in terms of schedule two, which is ironically less restricted than psilocybin,

but methamphetamine and cocaine. I've done human research with. My research has been legal. So they're scheduled compounds, but they're not completely legal. Like you can do research with them with the appropriate licenses and approval. So there really is no such thing. And like alcohol, well, it's illegal if you're 12 years old or 18 years old or 20 years old.

And for anyone, it's illegal to be drinking it while you're driving. So there's always a nuance. That's rules, right? It's not dichotomy. And I actually should admit, it's been all my to-do list for a while to buy in Massachusetts some like addabolors, buy weed legally. actually should admit, it's been on my to-do list for a while to buy in Massachusetts some

like, addabolors by weed legally. I, um, yeah, haven't done that in Massachusetts, let's put it this way. And I wonder what that experience is like, because I get, I think it's fully legal in Massachusetts. And so I wonder what legal drugs look like to me, you know, I grew up with even weed being like, you know, not It's like this forbidden thing, you know, not not forbidden, but it's illegal You know most people of course I never partook but most people I knew would attain it illegally And so that big switch that's been happening across the country There's like federal stuff going on to make marijuana legal federal.

I'm happy, get attention. There's some movement there. I mean, the house passed bill that's not gonna be passed by the Senate, but yeah, it's progress. But it's changed, there's clearly a change in it. Right, it's moving in a trend. So that's the example of a drug that used to be illegal and not becoming more and more and more legal.

So I wonder what cocaine being legal looks like. What a society with cocaine being legal looks like. The rules around it, the processes in which you can consume it in a safer way and be more educated about about consequences, be able to control dose and like purity, much better, be able to get help for overdose, I don't know all those kinds of things. I, it does in a utopian sense feel like legalizing drugs

at least should be talked about and considered, versus keeping them in the dark. I agree. But yeah, so that in your sense, it's possible that in 50 years, we legalize all drugs and it makes for better world. The way I like to talk about it is that I would say that we, it's possible and it would probably be a good thing if we regulate all drugs. How would you regulate cocaine, for example? Is there ideas there?

So yeah, and you were already going, you know, where I was going with that kind of first I described how there's always anyone's and even like the cannabis and Massachusetts federally illegal. So for example, if I was like, and I, you know, colleagues that do cannabis research where they get people high in the lab, like you're a federal funded researcher within NIH funds, you can't get that, that stuff from the dispensary because it's you're breaking a federal law, even though the feds don't have the resources to go after they don't want the controversy this point

to go after the individual users or even the, the sellers in those legal states. So there's always this nuance, but it's it's about right the right regulation. So I think we already know enough that for example, like I think safe injection sites for hard drugs makes a lot of sense. Like I wouldn't want heroin and cocaine at the convenience stores. And I don't think maybe there's some extreme libertarians that want that. I think even the folks that identify as libertarians probably most of them don't, well, I don't know, like not all of them want that, you know. I think, you know, that as a form of regulation, like look, if you're using these hard drugs on a regular basis, you're putting yourself at risk for lethal overdose. You're putting yourself at risk for lethal overdose. You're putting yourself at risk for catching HIV and and hepatitis

If you're gonna do it if you're doing it anyway come to this place where at least you're not like you know You're like pulling the the water out of like you know the puddle on the side of the street Yeah, so it's done by professionals and those professionals are able to educate you also. So like a 7-11 clerk may not be both capable of helping you to inject the drug properly, but also won't be equipped to educate you at, but the negative consequences on those kinds of things. That's a huge part of it, the education. But then I think with the opioids like the big part of it is just like With naloxone which is an antagonist it goes into the The receptor it's called Narcan that's the trade name But it's what they revive people on an opioid overdose. That's almost completely effective Like if there's a medical professional there and someone's Odeeing on an opioid They're virtually guaranteed to live. Like that's remarkable.

That if 100% at the opioid crisis, you know, if all of those people right now that are dying, we're doing that in the presence of a medical professional, like even like a nurse with Narcan, there'd be basic almost no deaths. There's always some exceptions, but you know, almost no deaths. Like that's staggering to me. So the idea that people are doing this You know that we could have that level of positive effect without encouraging the drug And this is where like you get into this like terrain of like sending the wrong message and it's like No, you can do that you can say like we're not

Encouraging this in fact probably one of the greatest advertisements for not getting hooked on heroin is like visiting a method on clinic, visiting a safe injection site. Like, like this is not like an advertisement for getting hooked on this drug, but knowing that we can save people. Now, you have a landscape here because a lot of times it's just like supervised injection, but you bring your own stuff, you know, you bring your own heroin, which could still be, you know, dirty and filled with fentanyl and fentanyl derivatives, which because an incredible potency and the more difficulty measuring it, it's and some differences at the receptor, like you may be more likely, you are more likely on average to at least overly overdose on it. You know, so you could the the level that's been more explored in Switzerland is

So you could the level that's been more explored in Switzerland is in some places is is you actually provide the drug itself and you supervise the injection. So I don't see that idea. Yeah, I did public health data are completely on the side of there's really no credible evidence to this. If we allow that we're sending the wrong message and everyone's going to I mean, I'm not showing up. Like, you know, and it's different by drug. Like, yeah, you, you legal that, you set up cannabis shops and some people are gonna say it so you're gonna go there. I don't think a whole lot of people are gonna go to one of these places and say I'm gonna shoot up heroin for the first time

because and even if like, you know, it's a country of 300 million people. Like even if someone does that, you have to compare this to the everyday people are dying from opioid overdoses. People's kids, people's uncles, people's like, these are real lives that are being shattered. So you just look at that. And then the other thing, and I know this from having done residential, even like non-treatment

research where we just have a cocaine user or something, stay on our inpatient ward for a month and you really get to know them and sometimes you see, like oftentimes that's the first time this person has had a discussion with a medical professional, any type of professional, in their entire life around their drug use, even if they're not looking to quit. And it's like, you know, you could imagine that

in these safe injection settings where it's like, it might be a year into treatment and they're like, you know, doc, I know you're not the cops, like you really care for me, like, I think I'm year into treatment and they're like, you know, doc, I know you're not the cops. Like, you really care for me. Like, I think I'm ready to try that method on thing. I think I'm really, I think I want to be done. I'm in a conversation about it.

Yeah. Yeah, they get to trust the people and realize that they're there because they truly like, they have a compassion, a love for this community, like as human beings and they don't want people to die, and you get real human connections. And again, those are the conditions

where people are gonna ultimately seek treatment, and not everyone always will, but you're gonna get that. And then you're gonna get people like looking into treatment options, sometimes maybe years into the treatment, so it's like they're just all of these indirect benefits that I think at that level

I don't know if you'd call that legalizing, you know, I think again, right at least well regulated Right, whatever that word is yeah, well regulated, but out in the open right minimizing as many harms as we can While not encouraging I mean, we don't encourage people to drink all the, I mean, people die every year from caffeine overdose, like, you know, there's different ways to like, you know, just by allowing something, doesn't mean we're sending the message that, you know, by saying we're not going to give you a felony, which is actually often the penalty for for psychedelics. I just actually testified for the judiciary committee, the Senate, the assembly in New Jersey. And just to move psilocybin from a felony to misdemeanor, they use different language in New Jersey.

It's weird, but like the equivalent of felony misdemeanor. And that was like two people didn't vote for that on this committee because it was might, one of them said it might be sending the wrong message. And it's like a felony. I mean, there's real harms. Like that's the scarlet letter, the rest of your life. You're stuck at the lower ends of the employment letter. You're not gonna get loans for education, all of this,

maybe because of a stupid mistake you made once as a 19 year old. Doing something that like, you know, a presidential candidate could have done and admitted to and had no problem, you know? Yeah. What drug is the most addictive, the most dangerous in your view, not maybe specifically, specifically with drug, but more like in our society today, what is a highly problem

egg drug? more like in our society today, what is a highly problem, AgDRAG? We talked about psychedelics not being that addictive on the other flip side of that. You mentioned cocaine. Is that is that the top one? Is there something else that's a concern to you? It depends and you've already alluded to this nuance. It depends on how you find it. If we're talking about on the ground today, in you know, modern society, I'd say nicotine tobacco. How would you say? I mean, in terms of mortality, it kills far more than any other drug known to humankind.

Four times more than alcohol, like half million deaths in the US every year and about five to six million worldwide due to tobacco. That's four times more in the US than alcohol. And if you graph all of the drugs legal and illegal, like, you know, put all of the illegal drugs in like one category on that figure and you put alcohol and tobacco on that figure, all the illegal drugs combined barely, they're a barely visible blip to this incredible, like, there's no, even all of the opioid epidemic rolled up,

along with cocaine and everything else, the meth barely shows up compared to tobacco. That's one of those uncomfortable truths that I don't know what to do with. It's like where everybody's freaking out about coronavirus, right? And nobody's freaking out. It's all relative. If you look at the relative thing, it's like, well, why aren't we freaking out about cigarettes? Which we are increasingly so

over the historically speaking, right? Right. It's like terrorism versus swimming pools, I remember that being back in the, after the war and terror started. It's like, yeah, there's not even comparison. Okay. So, you know, that's a little sobering truth there. Because I was thinking like cocaine, I was thinking about all these hard drugs, but the reality is relatively nicotine is the is the big one. And you didn't ask about mortality or deaths. Yes, about addiction, but that's that really is hard to hard to evaluate. It gets into those nuances. I spoke

of before about there's not a unidimensional way to measure reinforcement. It kind of depends on the situation and what measure we're looking at. But you know, more people have access to tobacco. I'm not I'm not right advocating that we make it illegal drug i think that would i would be a horrible mistake although there is a very credible push to to uh mandate the reduction of nicotine and cigarettes which i have most scientists that study it or for it i think there's some real dangers there because i see that in the broader history of drug use. It's like when has drug prohibition worked broadly speaking and it's, to me, that path would only make sense in very good conjunction with e-cigarettes, which once they're fully regulated, can be a safer, not safe, but much safer alternative. And if we don't, if we tax the hell out of e-cigarettes

and ban every attractive feature like like flavors and everything, then that's going to push people to a black market if they can't get the real thing from real sick, like some people will just quit straight out. But I think what the regulators and what a lot of scientists that study tobacco like myself, it's a big part still of what I study. They're not used to thinking about the tobacco really as a drug largely speaking in terms of for example the history of prohibition. And I think of like we already know there's an elicit market, a black market for tobacco to get around taxes. And for selling even loose cigarettes,

that's what initially caused in Staten Island, the police to approach it. Was it Eric Garland who is selling loose cigarettes and he got choked out? I mean, the thing that caused that police contact was he was selling, well, I think, report it to sell individual cigarettes for like, you know, you could sell them for court

to happen in Baltimore. And it's like, that's technically illegal. But, you know, are you not going to have massive boats of, you know, supplies coming over from China and elsewhere of real deal cigarettes, if you ban, you know, the sale of nicotine, like it's obviously going to happen. And you have to weigh that against, you know, you're going to create a black market to one size or another. And you're in tuition that really hasn't worked throughout the history when we've tried it. Right, but I see a potential path forward, but only if it's well, if it's not in conjunction with e-cigarettes.

If there's a clear alternative that's a positive alternative that kind of stirs the population that is always an alternative, yeah. The difference here, the unique thing that could be taken advantage of here is nicotine is by and large not what causes the harm. It's the aromatic hydrocarbons, it's the carcinogens and tobacco, it's burning tobacco smoke, it's not the nicotine. So that it's not like alcohol prohibition where like, you know, you couldn't create the adoubles, the near beer is not going to have the alcohol.

And so people are like, here you do have the possibility of giving another medium the ability to deliver the drug, which still aren't, to a lot of people, isn't preferred to the tobacco, but nonetheless, again, if you over-regulate those and make them less attractive, like if you aren't thoughtful about the and make them less attractive, like if you aren't thoughtful about the nicotine limits and thoughtful about whether you're allowing flavors and everything, and if you over-tax them, you're actually decreasing the ability to compete with a more dangerous product. So I feel like there is a potential path forward, but I don't have a lot of confidence that that's going to be done in a thoughtful analytical way. And I'm afraid that it could decrease the increase of black market calls all of the harms.

Like every other drug we're moving away from the heavy from the prohibition model slowly, but the big barge ship is like making a very slow turn and like, okay, we really had a step back and question if we went with nicotine tobacco or we moving into that direction. Like, picture. It doesn't quite make sense. You've done a study on cocaine and sexual decision making. Can you explain the findings? I mean, in a broad sense, how do you do a study that involves cocaine?

And the other, how do you do a study involving this sexual decision making? And then, how do you do a study that combines both? Yeah, sex and drugs to them, just missing the rock and roll. It's the two controversial rock and roll isn't very controversial. Yeah. Yeah. So the cocaine, you know, lots of hoops to drum through. You got to have a lot of medical support. You got to be at a, basically, an institution, a research unit like I'm at that has a long history and the ability to do that. And you get ethics approval, get FDA approval, but it's possible.

And whenever you're dealing with something like cocaine, you would never want to give that to a not someone who hasn't already used cocaine. And you want to make sure you're not giving it to someone who's an active user who wants to quit. So the idea is like, okay, if you're using this type of drug anyway, and you're, and we're really sure you're not looking to quit, hey, use a couple times in the lab with us so we can at least learn something and part of what we learn is maybe to help people not use and reduce the harms of cocaine.

So there's hoops to jump through with the sexual decision making. I looked at the main thing. I looked at was this model of I applied delayed discounting to what we talked about earlier than now versus later that kind of decision making that goes along with addiction. I applied that to economy's decisions and I've done probably published about 20 or so papers with this and different drugs and and uh. So the primary metric is whether you do a don't use the condom. That's the right all hypithetic and so this is using Hypothetical decision-making, but I've published some studies looking at showing a tight correspondence to self-reported Incorrelational studies to self-reported behavior. So this is like so

Like how do you do a questionnaire kind of thing? Right. So it's not quite a questionnaire, but it's a, it's a, it's a behavioral task requiring them to respond to. So you show pictures of a bunch of individuals. And it's kind of like one of these fun behavioral, like, a lot of them, you get, like, numbers of born, but it's like, okay, hot or not, like which of these 60 people would have a one-night stand with? Men, women, so pick whatever you like. A little bit of this, a little bit of that. Whatever you're into, it's all variety there.

Out of that group, you pick some subsets of people who you think is the, you know, the one you most want to have sex with, the least, he thinks most likely to have an STI, or least likely, a sexually transmitted disease by STI. And then you could do certain decision making questions. So what I've done is ask, say this Percy Redavinia, this person once had sex with you now, you met them, you get along casual sex scenario like a one night stand with a condoms available, just rate your likelihood from one to a hundred on a kind of scale. Would you use it? Would you use it? But then you can change your scenario to say, okay, now rate your likelihood from one to 100 on this kind of scale. Would you use it?

But then you can change your scenario to say, okay, now I'm imagining you have to wait five minutes to use a condom. So the choice is now instead of using condom versus not in terms of your likelihood scale. Now it ranges from half sex now without a condom versus on the other end of the scale is wait five minutes to have sex with a condom. So you rate your likelihood of where your behavior would be along that continuum. And then you could say, okay, well, what about an hour? What about three hours? What about, you know, what about 24 hours?

Right. I'm misunderstanding. Now without a condom or five minutes later with a condom, right? So what's supposed to be the preference for the person? Like, there's a lot of factors coming into play, right? There's a pleasure of personal preference and then there's also the safety. Are those competing objectives? Right. And so we do get at that through some individual measures. And this task is more of a face ballot task where there's a lot underneath the hood. So for most people, sex with the condom is the better reward. But underneath the hood of that is just at the purely physical level,

they'd rather have sex without the condom. It's going to feel better. What do you mean by reward? Like when they calculate their trajectory through life and try to optimize it, then sex with the condom is a good idea. Well, it's really based on, I mean, yeah, presumably that's the case, but it's measured by like what would really that first question where there is no delay. Most people say they would be at the higher net scale. A lot of times 100% they would say they

would definitely use a condom. Not everybody in there. We know that's the case. See, it's like that some people don't like. Some people say, yeah, I want to use a condom, but quarter of the time ended up not because I just get lost in the passion at the moment. So for the people, I mean, the only reason that people, so behaviorally speaking, at least for a large number of people in many circumstances, condom use as a reinforcer, just because people do it. Like, you know, why are they doing it? They're not because it makes the sex feel better, but because it makes that it allows for at least the same general reward, even if it actually feels a little bit not as good, you know, with the condom, none the less,

they get most of the benefit without the concurrent, oh my gosh, I think this risk goes by their unwanted pregnancy or getting HIV or way more likely HIV, you know, herpes, you know, in general, the words, et cetera, all the lovely ones. And we've actually done research saying like where we gauge the probability of these individual S different SDIs and it's like what's the heavy hitter in terms of what people are using to judge, you know, to evaluate whether they're going to use

a condom. So that's why the condom use is the delayed thing five minutes or more. And then, yeah, yeah, because that would normally be the larger, later reward, like the $10 versus the nine. It's like the 10, which is counterintuitive if you just think about the physical pleasure. So that's a good, that's a good thing to measure. So condom uses a really good concrete, quantum, quantifiable, quantifiable thing that you can use in a study. And then you can add a lot of different elements like the presence of

cocaine and so on. Yeah, you can get people loaded on like any number of drugs like cocaine, alcohol, and methamphetamine are the three that I've done and published on. And it's interesting that these are fun studies, man. Right. I love to get people loaded in a state context and like, but to really, it started like there was some early research for. I mean, the psychedelics are the most interesting, but it's like all of these drugs are fascinating. The fact that all these are keys that unlock a certain like psychological experience in the head. And so there was this work with alcohol that showed that it didn't affect those monetary delayed discounting decisions, you know, $9 now versus $10 later. And like delayed discounting decisions, you know, $9.00, $10 later. And like getting people drunk.

And I thought to myself, are you telling me that, that, you know, getting someone that people being drunk is does not cause people at least sometimes to make, to choose what's good for them in the short term at the expense of what's good for them to, you know, in the long term, it's like, you know, bullshit, you know, like, we see, like, but what, in what context does that happen? So that's what, that's something that inspired me to go in this direction of like, aha, risky sexual decisions is something they do when they're drunk. They don't necessarily go home and, and even though some people have gambling problems and

alcohol interacts with that, the most typical thing is not for people to go home, and it log on and change their, their allocation and their retirement account or something like that. Most typical thing is not for people to go home, log on and change their allocation and the retirement account or something like that. But they're more likely risky sexual decisions. They're more likely to not wait the five minutes for the condom instead go no condom now. Right. That's a big effect and we see that. And interestingly, we do not see, with those different drugs, we don't see an effect if we just look at that zero delay condition. In other words, the condoms right there waiting to be used, would you, how likely are to use it?

You don't see it. I mean, people are by large going to use the condom. Yeah. So, and that's the way most of this research outside of behavior like anomics that's just looked at condom use decisions, very little of which has ever actually administered the drugs, which is another unique aspect. But they usually just look at like assuming the condom is there. But this is more using behavioral economics to delve in and model something that I've done

survey research on this, modeling what actually happens. Like, you meet someone at a laundry mat. Like you weren't planning on like, you know, one thing leads another, they live around the corner. You know, these things, you know, and like we did one survey with, with men who have sex with men and found that 25% of them, 24% about a quarter reported in the last six months that they had unprotected anal intercourse, which is the most risky in terms of sexual transmen transmitted infection.

In the last six months, in a situation where they would have used a condom, but they simply didn't use one just because they didn't have one on them. So this, to me, it's like, unless we delve into this and understand this, these suboptimal conditions, we're not going to fully address the problem. There's plenty of people that say, yep, condom use is good. I use it a lot of the time. You know, it's like, where is that failing? And it's under these suboptimal conditions,

which in Frank, if you think about it, it's like most of the case. Action is unfolding, things are getting hot and heavy. Someone's like, do you got a condom? Eh, no, it's like, do they break the action and take 10 minutes to go to the convenience store or whatever. Maybe everything's closed. Maybe they got to wait till tomorrow. And though, there's something to be studied there on the, that just seems like an unfortunate set of circumstances.

Like, what's the solution to that is, I mean, what's the psychology that needs to be like taken apart there? Because it just seems like that's the way of life. We don't expect the things that happen. Are we need to understand how we humans evaluate the cost of that. I think in terms of how we use this to help people, it's mostly on the environment side, rather than on the... And there's a side of course.

Yeah, although those interact. So it's like, in one sense, if you're, especially, if you're going to be drinking or using another substance that, that is associated with, you know, a stimulant, um, I mean, alcohol and stimulants go along with risky sex, you know, good to be aware that you might make decisions just to tell yourself, you might make a decision that, that is going to, that you wouldn't made in your sober state. And so, hey, throwing a condom in the,

in the purse and, and the pocket, you know, might be, you know, a good idea. I think at the environmental level, just more condom, I mean, it highlights what we know about just making condoms widely available. Something that I'd like to do is like, you know, reinforcing condom use. And, you know, so, you know, just getting people used to caring a condom everywhere they go. Because it's such a once in a time, it's in someone's habit. If they are say like a young single person and, you know, it's, you know, they occasionally have unprotected sex like training those people. Like what if

you got a text message, you know, once every few days saying, ah, if you, if you show me a, some macaphodo of a condom within a minute, you get a reward of $5, you could shape that up like the process called Continuity Management. It's basically just straight up, operant reinforcement. You could shape that up with no problem.

And, and I mean, those procedures of Continuity Management giving people systematic rewards is like, for example, the most powerful way to, to reduce cocaine use and addicted people. And, um, uh, but, but, but by, by, is saying, if you show me a negative urine for cocaine, I'm going to give you a monetary reward. And like, that has huge effects in terms of decreasing cocaine use. If that can be that powerful for something like stopping cocaine use, how powerful for that powerful could that be for shaping up just carrying a condom? Because the primary, unlike cocaine use, here, we're not saying you can't have the main

reward. Like, you can still have sex. And you can even have sex in the way that you tell yourself you'd rather do it, if the condom is available. So, you know, like, you're not, you know, it's relatively speaking, it's way easier than like, not using cocaine if you're like using cocaine. It's just basically eating in the habit of carrying a condom. So that's just one idea of like what?

There could be also the capitalistic solutions of like, there could be a business opportunity for like a door dash for condoms. Oh yeah. Like delivery. I thought about this within five minute delivery of a condom in any location. Oh, Uber for condoms. I thought about it, not with condoms, but a very similar line of thinking, a line that you're going into in terms of Uber and people getting drunk when they intend, they enter

the bar playing to have one or two. They end up having five or six and it's like, okay, yeah, you can take the cab home with the Uber home. Yeah. But you've left your car there, it might get towed, you might, like there's also the hassle of just, you know, you wanna wake up tomorrow with your hangover and forget about it and move on.

Like, and I think a lot of people in the situation and they're like, screw it, I'm gonna take the risk, just get it, you know, what if you had a new Uber service where two, you know, you have two, where two, you know, you have two, so a car come out with two drivers and one of them, two sober drivers obviously and the person, the one driver drops off the other that then drives you home in your car.

So that you can, I mean, I think a lot of people would pay 50 bucks, it's gonna be more than a regular Uber, but it's gonna be done. I got the money, I already spent 60 bucks at the bar tonight, like just get the damn thing done, tomorrow I'm done with it, my car, I wake up, my car's in front of my house. I think that would be, I think someone could,

I'm not gonna open that business, so like if anyone hears this and wants to take off with that, like, I think it could help a lot of people. Yeah, definitely an Uber itself, I would say helped a huge amount of people. It's just making it easy to make the decision of going home, not driving yourself. I read about an Austin where they, I don't know where it's at now, where they outlawed Uber for a while, you know, because of the whole taxicab union type thing. And how just, yeah, there were like hordes of drunk people that were used to Uber that

now didn't have a cheap alternative. So just a, we didn't exactly mention you've done a lot of studies in sexual decision making with different drugs. Is there some interesting insights or findings on the difference between the different drugs? So I think you said a method as well. So cocaine, is there some interesting characteristics about decision making that these drugs alter versus alcohol, all those kinds of things? I think, and there's much more to study with this, but I think the biggie there is that the stimulants, they create risky sex by really increasing the rewarding value of sex.

Like, if you talk to people that are really, especially that have, are hooked on stimulants, one of the biggies is like, sex on cocharmeth is like so much better than sex without, and that's a big part of what, why have trouble quitting because it's so tied to their sex life. So it's not that your decision making is broken. It's just that you, well, you allocate it's a different aspect of their decision. Yeah. Yeah.

On the reward side, I think on the alcohol, it works more through disinhibition. It's like alcohol is really good at reducing the ability of a delayed punisher, to have an effect on current behavior. In other words, there's this bad thing that's gonna happen tomorrow or a week from now or 20 years from now. Being drunk is a really good,

and you see this in rats making decisions. A high dose of alcohol makes someone less sensitive to those consequences. So I think that's the lever that's being hit with alcohol. And it's the more just the increasing the rewarding value of sex by the psychostimulants on that side. We actually found that it, and it was amazing, because like hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent by NIH to study the connection between cocaine and HIV. Like we ran the first study on my grant that like actually just gave people cocaine under double-blind conditions and showed that like, yeah, when people are on coke, like their ratings of sexual desire, even though they're not in a sexual situation, yeah, you showed

them some pictures, but they're just saying, they're horny. Like you get subjective ratings of how much sexual desire you're feeling right now, people get horny when they're on stimulants. And a lot of people say duh, if they really know these drugs. But that's a rigorous study that's in the lab that shows, like there's a plot. Yeah, the dose effects of that, the time course of that. Yeah, it's not just.

Can you please tell me there's a paper with a plot that shows dose versus evaluation of like hornyness. Yeah, we didn't say hornyness. We said sexual arousal. Yeah, basically. Yeah, there's a plot. I'm going to find this plot. Right. Rouse in it to you. There was one headline from some publicity on the work that said, horny cocaine users don't use condoms or something like that. I like, I wouldn't have put it that way, but like, yeah, that's right. I guess that's what it finds. So you've published a bunch of studies on psychedelics. Is there some, especially favorite

insightful findings from some of these that you could talk about. Maybe favorite studies are just something that pops the mind in terms of both the goals and the major insights gained and maybe the side little curiosities that you discovered along the way. Yeah, I think of the work with like using psilocybin to help people quit smoking. And we've talked about smoking being such a serious addiction. And so that what inspired me to get into that was just kind of having like behavioral psychology is my primary lens sort of this sort of like mean, a kind of radical empirical basis, I got really interested in the mystical

experience and all of these reports very interested. And, but at the same time, I'm like, okay, let's get down to some behavior change and something that we can record, like quantitatively verify biologically. So, to find all kinds of negative behaviors that people practice and see that we can record, like quantitatively verify biologically. So find all kinds of negative behaviors that people practice and see if we can turn those into positive. What changes. Right. Like really change it. Not just people saying, which again is interesting. I'm not dismissing it, but folks that say, my life has turned around. I feel this has completely changed me. It's like, yep, that's good. All right, let's see if we can harness that and test that into something that it's, that's real behavior change. You know what I mean? It's quantifiable. It's like, okay, you've been smoking for 30 years. You know, like, that's a real thing. And you've tried

a dozen times, like, seriously to quit. And you haven't been able to long-term. Like, okay. And if you quit, like, we'll ask you, and I'll believe you, but I don't trust everyone reading the paper to believe you. So we're going to have you, you pee in a cup, and we'll test that. And we'll have you blow into this little machine that measures carbon monoxide, and we'll test that. So multiple levels of biological verification. Like, now we're getting, like, to me, that's where the rubber meets the road in terms of like therapeutics. It's like, can we really shift behavior? And since in so much as we've talked about my other scientific work outside of psychedelics is about understanding addiction and drug use, so it's like, you know, looking at addiction,

it's a no brainer and smoking is just a great example. And so back to your question, like, we've had really high success rates. I mean, it really, it rivals anything that's been published in the scientific literature. The caveat is that, you know, that's based on our initial trial of only 15 people, but extremely high long-term success rates, 80% at six months per smoke-free. So, can we discuss the details? So, first of all, which psychedelic we're talking about, and maybe can you talk about the 15 people in the other study ran and what you found? Yeah, yeah.

So the drug we're using is psilocybin, and we're using moderately high and high doses of psilocybin. And I should say this about most of our work. These are not kind of museum level doses. In other words, nothing. Even big fans of psychedelics want to take and go to a concert or go to the museum. If someone's at Burning Man on this type of dose, they're probably going to want to find their way back to their tent and zip up and hunker down for not being around strangers. And by the way, the delivery method, so Simon is mushrooms, I guess.

What's the usual? Is it edible? Is there some other way, like how is people supposed to think about the correct dosing of these things? Because I've heard that it's hard to dose correctly. That's right. So in our studies, we use the pure compound psilocybin, so it's a single molecule, a bunch of molecules, and we give them a capsule with that in it. And so it's just a little capsule, at least while what people, when psilocybin is used outside of research, it's always in the context of mushrooms. Because they're so easy to grow, there's no market for synthetic psilocybin. There's no reason for that to pop up. The high dose that we use in research is 30 milligrams body weight

adjusted. So if you're a heavier person, it might be like 40 or even 50 milligrams. We have some data that, based on that data, we're actually moving into like getting away from the body weight adjusting of the dose and just giving an absolute dose. It seems like there's an justification for the body weight based dosing, but I digress. Generally 30, 40 milligrams, it's a high dose. And based on average, even though as you alluded to, there's variability, which gets people into some trouble in terms of mushrooms, like salosy, cubensis, which is the most common for species in the listed market in the US. This is about equivalent to five dried grams, which is right at about where right where McKenna and others, they call it a heroic

dose. You know, this is not hanging out with your friends going to the concert again. So this is a real deal dose, even to people that like really, you know, just even to psycho knots. And even we've even had other. Yeah, people that, yeah, that's a great. That's a great. Cosmonaut, you know, like, for psyched elements, yeah, going as far out as possible, but even for them even for even for those who've fallen to space before Right, right. They're like holy shit. I didn't know the orbit would be that yeah far out, you know like or I escaped the or get orbit I was in interplanetary space there So these folks in the 15 folks in the study they're not there's not a question of

So these folks in the 15 folks in the study, they're not there's not a question of dose being too low to truly have an impact. Right, right. Very out of hundreds of volunteers over the years, we've only seen a couple of people where there was a mild effect of the of the 30 milligrams and who knows that person's their serotonin's they might have lesser density of serotonin two A receptors or something. We don't know, But it's extremely rare. For most people, this is like something interesting is going to happen. Put it that way. Joe Rogan, I think that Jamie, his producers, immune to a second. So maybe he's a good recruit for the state to test. So that's interesting. Now, I'm not the caveat is I'm not encouraging anything illicit, but just theoretically, my first question as a behavioral pharmacologist

is like, you know, increase the dose. You know, like really, let's see the full, I'm not telling him Jamie to do that, but like, okay, like, you know, you're taking the same amount that friends might be taking, but yeah. But he was also referring to the psychedelic effects of edible marijuana, which is, is there rules on dosage for marijuana? Is there limits? Like what place of words? This is this all

ghost. It's probably a state by state, right? It is, but most they've gone that direction and states that didn't initially have these rules have now have them. So it was like, you'll get, I think, you know, five, 10, I think 10, five or 10 milligrams of THC, being a common. And like, and this is an important thing, like where they've moved from not being allowed to say, like, have a whole candy bar and have each of the eight or 10 squares in the candor bar being 10 milligrams, but it's like, no, the whole thing because like, you know, something gets a can of art. They're eating the freaking candy bar. And it's like, if you, unless you're a daily cannabis user, if you take, you know,

100 milligrams, it's like, that's what could lead to a bad trip for someone. And it's like, you know, a lot of these people, it's like, oh, you used to smoke a little weed in college. They might say they're visiting Denver for a business trip. And I'm like, why not? these people, it's like, oh, you used to smoke a little weed in college. They might say they're visiting Denver for a business trip and they're like, why not let's give it a shot, you know? And they're like, oh, I don't want to smoke something because it's going to, so I'm going to be safer with this edible. I can assume this massive, you know, but there's huge tolerance. So a regular like for someone who's smoking weed every day, they might take five milligrams

and kind of hardly feel anything. And they might, they may really need something like 30, 40, 50 milligrams. I have a strong effect, but yeah. So that's, they've evolved in terms of the rules about like, okay, what constitutes a dose, you know, which is why you see less big cany bars and more, or if you're is, you're like, if it is a whole cany bar, you're only getting a small dose like 10 milligrams or yeah, because that's where people get in trouble more often with addables. Yeah, except joy deas, which I've heard. That's definitely something I want to talk to out of the crazy comedians I want to talk to. Anyway, so yeah, 15, the study of the 15 and the dose not being a question. So like, what was the recruitment based on?

What was the, like, how did the study get conducted? Yeah, so the recruitment, I really liked this fact. It wasn't people that, you know, largely were, you know, we were honest about what we were studying, but for most people, it was, they were in the category of like, you know, not particularly interested in psychedelics, but more of like, they were in the category of not particularly interested in psychedelics, but more of like they want a quid smoke and they've tried everything but the kitchen sink. And this sounds like the kitchen sink.

Well, it's Hopkins, so thinking that sounds like it's safe enough. So what the hell, let's give it a shot. Like most of them were in that category, which I really, enough. So like, what the hell, let's give it a shot. Like most of them were in that category, which I really, you know, I appreciate because it's more of a test, you know, of, of, of, yeah, just like a better model of what if these are approved as medicines, like what you're going to have the average participant, you know, be like. And so the therapy involves a good amount of non-silocybin sessions of preparatory sessions, like eight hours of getting to know the person, like the two people who are going to be their guides of the person in the room with them during the experience,

having these discussions with them where you're both kind of rapport building, just kind of discussing their life, getting to know them, but then also telling them, preparing them about the psilocybin experience that it could be scary, and this sends, but here's how to handle it, trust like OB open, and also during that preparation time, preparing them to quit smoking, using really standard bread and butter techniques

that can all fall under the label, typically of the cognitive behavioral therapy, Just stuff like before you quit, we assign a target quit date ahead of time. You're not just quitting on the fly. And that happens to be the target quit date. And our study was the day that where they got the first psilocybin dose. But doing things like keeping a smoking diary like, okay, during the three weeks until you quit, every time you smoke cigarette, just like jot down what you're doing, what you're feeling, what situation, that type of thing, and then having

some discussion around that, and then going over the pluses and minuses in their life that smoking kind of comes with, being honest about the, this is what it does for me. This is why I like it. This is why I don't like it. Preparing for like, what if you, what if you do slip, how to handle it?

Like, don't dwell on guilt, because that leads to more full-on relapse, you know, just kind of treat as a learning experience, that type of thing. Then you have the session day where they come in, they, they, um, five minutes of questionnaires, but pretty much they jump into the, we touch base with them, we give them the capsule. It's a serious setting, but a comfortable one. They're in a room that looks more like a living room than like a research lab. We measure their blood pressure than experience,

but kind of minimal, kind of medical vibe to it. And they lay down on a couch, and it's a purposefully and introspective experience. So they're laying on a couch during most of the five to six hour experience in the ring, eye shades, which is a better connotation as a name than blindfold. But like, you know, so the ring eye shades, but that's and and they're wearing headphones through which music is played. Mostly classical, although we've done some variation of that. I have a paper that was recently accepted kind of comparing it to more like gongs and harmonic bowls and that type of thing kind of

sound, you know, kind of... Yeah, you've also added this to the science and of a paper on the musical accompaniment to the psychedelic experience as fast as... Right, and we found basically that about the same effect, even by a trend not significant, but a little bit better in effect, both in terms of subjective experience and long-term, whether it help people quit smoking just a little tiny non-significant trend even favoring the novel playlist with the Tibetan singing bowls and the gongs and all didgeridoo and all of that. So anyway just saying okay we can deviate a little bit from this like what goes back to the 1950s of this method of using classical music as part of this psychedelic therapy.

But they're listening to the music and they're not playing DJ in real time. You know, it's like, you know, they're just, be the baby, you're not the decision maker for today. Go inward, trust like go be open. And pretty much the only interaction, like, that we're there for is to deal with an anxiety that comes up. So, guide is kind of a misnomer in a sense. It's where a more of a safety net.

And so, tell us if you feel some butterflies that we can provide reassurance. Ahold of their hand can be very powerful. I've had people tell me that that was like the thing that really just grounded them. Can you break apart, trust, let go be open? What? So in a sense, how would you describe the experience, the intellectual and the emotional approach that people are supposed to take to really let go into the experience. Yeah. Trust is, trust the context, trust the guides, trust the overall institutional context. I see it as layers of safety, even though it's new.

Everything I told you about the relatively bodily safety of cells, nonetheless, we're still getting blood pressure throughout the session just in case. We have a physician on hand who can respond just in case we're literally across the street from the emergency department just in case you know all of that you know. Privacy is another thing you've talked about just trusting that you're at whatever happens is just between you and the people in the study. Right and hopefully they've really gotten that by that point deep into the study that like they realize where did we take that seriously and everything else, you know, and so it's really kind of like a very special role you're playing as a researcher or a guide and hopefully they have your

trust. And so, you know, and trust that they could be as emotional, everything from laughter to tears, like that's going to be welcomed. We're not judging them. It's like a, it's a therapeutic relationship where, you know, this is a safe container. It's a safe space. That's a lot of baggage to that term. But it truly is. It's a safe space for that, for this type of experience and to let go. So trust, let's see, let go. So that relates to the emotional, like, you feel like crying, cry, you feel like laughing your ass

off, laugh your ass off, you know, it's like all the things actually that Sometimes it's more challenging with a recreate someone has a large recreational use sometimes it's harder for them because People in that context and understandably so it's more about holding your shit. Yeah, so once had a bunch of mushrooms at a party Maybe they don't want to go into the back room and start crying about this these thoughts about the relationship with their mother and they don't want to go into the back room and start crying about these thoughts about the relationship with their mother. And they don't want to be the drama queen or king that bring their friends down because their friends are having an experience too. And so they want to like compose, you know, also just the appearance in social settings

versus the so like prioritizing how you appear to others versus the prioritizing the depth of the experience. And here in the study, you can prioritize the experience. Right. And it's all about like, you're the astronaut and there's only one astronaut. We're ground control. And I use this often with, I have a photo of the space shuttle on a plaque in my office and I kind of, he's often used that as an example. And it's like, we we're here for you like we're a team, but we have different roles

It's just like you don't have to like Compose yourself like you don't have to like be concerned about our safety like we're playing these roles today And like yeah, your job is to go as deep as possible Or as far out whatever your analogy is like as possible. And we're keeping you safe. And so yeah, and you really, the emotional side is a hard one, you know, because you really want people to like if they go into realms of subjectively of despair and sorrow, like yeah, like cry, you know, like it's okay, you know, and especially if someone's a more macho, and you know, you want this to be the place where they can let go. And again, something that they wouldn't or shouldn't do if someone was to theoretically use it in a in a social setting.

And like in all of these other things, like even that you get in those social settings of like, yeah, you don't have to worry about your wallet for being taken advantage, or for a woman sexually assaulted by some creep at a concert or something, because they're laying down, being far out. There's like a million sources of anxiety that are external versus internal.

So you can just focus on your own, like, the beautiful thing that's going on in your mind. And even the cops at that's going on in your mind. And even the cops at that layer, even though it's extremely unlikely, for most people, the cops would come in and bust them right when, like even at that theoretical, like that one in a billion chance, like that might be a real thing psychologically. In this context, we even got that covered. This is, we've got DEA approval.

Like, you work, this is okay by every level of society that counts, you know, that has the authority. So it's, so go deep, trust the, you know, trust the setting, trust yourself, you know, let go and be open. So in the experience, and this is all subjective and by analogy, but like, if there's a door, open it, go into it, if there's a stairwell, go down it or stairway, go up it, if there's a door, open it, go into it. If there's a stairwell, go down it,

or stairway, go up it. If there's a monster in the mind's eye, don't run, approach it, look in the eye and say, you know, let's talk. Read it. Yeah, what's up? What are you doing here? Let's talk turkey, you know?

And I thought, I can sense it in the chat, okay. Right, but it really is that. That really is a heart of it is this radical courage like it courage people are often struck by that coming out Like this is heavy lifting. This is a hard work people come out of this exhausted and it's it can be extremely Some people say it's the most difficult thing they've done in their life like choosing to let go on a moment a micro second by micro second basis difficult thing they've done in their life, like choosing to let go on a moment, a micro second by micro second basis, everything in their inclination is to, is to say, stop,

sometimes stop this. I don't like this. I didn't know it was going to be like this. This is too much. And Terence McKinna put it this way. It's like comparing to meditation and other techniques. It's like spending years, pushing, trying to press the accelerator to make something happen. Hydro psychedelics is like you're speeding down the mountain in a fully loaded semi truck, and you're charged with not slamming the brake. It's like, let it happen.

So it's very difficult into an engage, always go further into it and take that radical courage throughout. What do they say in self-report, if you can put general words to it, what is their experience? It's like, because these are many people like you said that haven't probably read much about psychedelics or they don't have like with Joe Rogan much about psychedelics or they don't have like with Joe Rogan like language or stories to put on it. So this is very raw self-report of experiences. What do they say the experiences like? Yeah, and some more so than others because everyone has been exposed at some level or another, but some it is pretty superficial as you're saying. One of the hallmarks of psychedelics is just their variability.

So it's like not the mean, but the standard deviation. It's so wide that it's like, it could be like hellish experiences. And, you know, just absolutely beautiful and loving experiences, everything in between. And both of those, like those could be two minutes apart from each other. Yeah. And sometimes kind of at the same, at the same time, concurrently. So, let's see, there's different ways to, there are some Jungian psychologists back in the

60s, Masters in Houston that wrote a really good book, The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience, kind of which is a plan, Varieties of Religious Experience by William James, that they described at this perceptual level. So, most people have that, you know, when, you know, whether they're looking at the room without the eye shades on or inside their, their mind's eye with the eye shades on colors, you know, sounds like this. It's a much richer sensorium, you know, which can be very interesting. And then at another level, a master's in Houston called the psychodynamic level, and I think you can think about it more broadly

than that, you know, that's kind of Jungian, but just the personal psychological levels, how I think of it, like, this is about your life. There's a whole life review. Oftentimes people have thoughts about their childhood, about their relationships, their spouse or partner, their children, their parents, their family of origin, their current family, like, you know, that stuff comes up a lot, including every,

like, like the love, just people just like pouring with tears about like, like how much like it hits them so hard how much they love people yeah like in a way that you know people that like they love their family but like it just hits them so hard that like how important this is and like the magnitude of that love and like what that means in their life so those those are some of the most moving experiences to be present for is where people, like it hits home, like what really matters in their life. And then you have this sort of what masters in Houston called the archetypal realm, which

kind of again is sort of yawning with the focus on archetypes, which is interesting, but I think of that more generally as like symbolic level. So just really deep experiences where you do have experiences that seem symbolic of, you know, very much in like, you know, what we know about dreaming and what most people think about dreaming, like there's this randomness of things, but sometimes it's pretty clear and retrospect, oh, like this came up because this thing has been on my mind,

you know, recently. So it seems to be there there seems to be this symbolic level. And then they have this the last level that they describe is the mystical integral level, which this is where there's lots of terms for it, but transcendental experiences, experiences of unity, mystical type effects. We often measure Europeans use a scale that will refer to oceanic boundlessness. This is all pretty much the same thing. This is like at some sense the deepest level of the very sense of self seems to be dissolved, minimize or expand it such that the boundaries

of the self go into and here I think some of this is just semantics, but whether the self is expanding such that there's no boundary between the self and the rest of the universe or whether there's no sense of self again might be just semantics, but this radical shift or sense of loss of sense of self or self-boundaries. And that's like the most, typically when people have that experience, they'll often report that as being the most remarkable. And this is what you don't typically get with MDMA. These deepest levels of the nature of reality itself, the subjectivity and objectivity, just like the seer and the scene become one. And it's a process. And yeah.

And they're able to bring that experience back and be able to describe it. Yeah, but one of the, to a degree, but one of the hallmarks going back to William James of describing a mystical experience is the ineffability. And so even though it's ineffable, people try as far as they can to describe it, but when you get the real deal, they'll say,

and even say that they say a lot of helpful things to help you describe the landscape, they'll say, no matter what I say, I'm still not even coming anywhere close to what this was, like the language is completely failing. And I like to joke that even though it's, it's ineffable, I were researchers, so we try to effort up, if I ask any of them to describe the experience.

I love it. That's a good one. But bringing it back a little bit, so for that particular study on tobacco, what was the results? What was the conclusions in terms of the impact of psilocybin on their addiction? So in that pilot study, it was very small and it wasn't a randomized study, so it was limited.

The only question we could really answer was, is this worthy enough of follow-up? Yes. And the answer to that was absent frequently, because the success rates were so high, 80% biologically confirmed successful at six months, that held up to 60% biologically confirmed abstinent at an average of two and a half years, a very long fall. Yeah, and so, I mean, the best that's been reported in the literature for smoking cessation is in the upper 50%. And that's with not one, but two medications for a couple of months, followed by regular

cognitive behavioral therapy, where you're coming in once a week or once every few weeks for an entire year. And so, but this is what very heavy and this is just like a few uses of so silent. So this was three doses of psilocybin over a total course, including preparation, everything of 15 week period, where there's mainly like for most part one meeting a week and then the three sessions are within that. And so it's, and we scale that back and the more the state we're doing right now, which I can tell you about, which is a randomized controlled trial. But, but it's the, yeah, the original, you know, pilot study was these 15 people.

So given the positive signal from the first study telling us that it was a worthy pursuit, we hustled up some money to actually be able to afford a larger trial. So it's randomizing 80 people to get either one still-osive in session. When we've scaled that down from three to one mainly because we're doing FMRI, neuroimaging before and after and it made it more experimentally complex to have multiple sessions. But one still-osiven session versus the nicotine patch using the FDA approved label, like standard use of the nicotine patch.

So it's randomized, 40 people get randomized to still-osiven one session, 40 of the nicotine patch. So it's randomized, 40 people get randomized to still, so I've been one session, 40 people get nicotine patch. And they all get the same cognitive behavioral therapies for the standard talk therapy. And we've scaled it down somewhat, so there's less weekly meetings, but it's been in the same ballpark. And right now we're still studying still ongoing.

And in fact, we just recently started recruiting again. We paused for COVID now. We're starting back up with some protections like masks and whatnot. But right now for the 44 people who have gotten through the one year follow up. And so that includes 22 from each of the two groups. The success rates are extremely high.

For the psilocybin group, it's 59% have been biologically confirmed as smoke free at one year after their quit date. And that compares to 27% for the nicotine patch, which by the way is extremely good for the nicotine patch compared to previous research. So the results could change because it's ongoing, previous research. So the results could change because it's ongoing, but we're mostly done and it's still looking extremely positive. So if anyone's interested, they have to be sort of be in commuting distance to the Baltimore area, but you know, to participate. Right, right, to participate. This is a good moment to bring up something. I think a lot of what you talked about is super interesting. And I think a lot of what you talked about is super interesting.

And I think a lot of people listening to this. So now it's anywhere from 300 to 600,000 people for just a regular podcast. I know a lot of them will be very interested what you're saying. And they're going to look you up. They're going to find your email. And they're going to write you a long email about some of the interesting things I found in any of your papers. How should people contact you? What is the best way for that? Would you recommend your super busy guy, you have a million things going on?

What, how should people communicate with you? Thanks for bringing this up. things going on, how should people communicate with you? Thanks for bringing this up. This is a, I'm glad to get the opportunity to address this. If someone's interested in participating in a study, the best thing to do is go to the website. Of the study or of, yeah, which website? So we have all of our psilocybin study.

So everything we have is up in on one website And then we link to the different study websites, but Hopkins psychedelic dot org So everything we do or you don't remember that just you know Go to your favorite search engine and look up Johns Hopkins Psychedelic and you're gonna find one of the first hits is gonna be our is this website and There's gonna be links to the smoking study and all of our other studies if there's no link to it there We don't have a study on it now and if you're interested in psychedelic research More broadly you can look up, you know, I get another university that might be closer to you

And there's a handful of them now across the country and there's some in Europe that that Have say is going on but you can at least in the US, you can look at clinicaltrials.gov and look up the term psilocybin. And in fact, optionally, people even in Europe can register their trial on there. So that's a good way to find studies. But for our research, rather than emailing me,

like a more efficient way is to go straight. And you can do that first phase of screening. There's some questions online and then someone will get back in touch with you. But I do already, you know, and I, I expect it's like going to increase, but I'm already at the level where my simple

limited mind and limited capacity is already, I sometimes fail to get back to emails. I mean, I'm trying to respond to my colleagues, my mentees, all these things, my responsibilities, and as many of the people just inquiring about I want to go to graduate school, I'm interested in this. I had this, I have a daughter that took us like a duck and she's having truffins like so I try to respond to those, but sometimes I just simply can't get to all of them already. To be honest, from my perspective, it's been quite heartbreaking because I basically don't

respond to any emails anymore. Especially, you mentioned mentees and so on. Outside of that circle, it's heartbreaking to me how many brilliant people there are thoughtful people, like loving people, and they write long emails that are really, by the way, I do read them very often. It's just that I don't, the response is then you're starting a conversation. And there's the heartbreaking aspect is you only have so many hours in the day to have deep meaningful conversation with human beings on this earth.

So you have to select who they are and you should, it's your family, it's people like you're directly working with. And even I guarantee you with this conversation people will write you long, really thoughtful emails, like there will be brilliant people, faculty from all over, PhD students from all over. And it's heartbreaking because you can't really get back to them. But you're saying like many of them, if you do respond, it's more like here, go to this website. If you're for when you're interested in the study, it just it makes sense to directly go to the site if there's applications open just to apply for the study. Right, right. Right. You know, as it is either a volunteer or if we're looking for somebody,

we're going to be posting, including on the Hopkins University website, we're going to be posting if we're looking for a position. I am right now actually looking through and it's mainly been through email and contacts, but should I say it? I think I'd rather cast my nets. I'm looking for a postdoc right now. Oh, great. So I've mentored postdocs for, I don't know, like a dozen years or so, and more and more of their time is being spent on psychedelics. So someone's free to contact me. That's more of a, that's sort of so close to home, that's a personal, you know, that like emailing me about that,

but I come to appreciate more the advice that folks like Tim Farris have of like, I think it's him like, five sends emails, you know, like, you know, a subject that gets to the point that tells you what it's about, so that like you break through the signal to the noise, but I really appreciate what you're saying

because part of the equation for me is I have a three year old and my time on the ground, on the floor playing blocks or cars with him is part of that equation. And even if the day is ending and I know some of those emails are slipping by and I'll never get back to them. And I'm struggling with it. I'm already, and I get what you're saying is I haven't seen anything yet, if with the type of exposure that like your podcast gets this will bring an exposure. And then

I think in terms of postdocs, this is a really good podcast in a sense that there's a lot of brilliant PhD students out there that are looking for positive from all over from MIT, probably from Hopkins is just all over the place. So this is, and I, we have different preferences, but my preference would also be to have like a form that they could fill out for post, because you know, it's very difficult to email to tell who's are really going to be a strong collaborator for you, like a strong postdoc, strong student

because you want a bunch of details, but at the same time, you don't want a million pages worth of email. So you want a little bit of an application process. So usually you set up a form that helps me indicate how passionate the person is, how willing they are to do hard work. Like I often ask a question, people, what do you think it's more important to work hard to work smart? And I use that, those types of questions to indicate who I would like to work with. Because it's counterintuitive. But anyway, I'll leave that question on answered for people to figure out themselves. But maybe if you know my love for David Gogans, you'll understand.

So anyway, those are good thoughts about the forms and everything. It's difficult. And that's something that evolves. Email is such a messy thing. There's speaking of Baltimore, Cal Newport, if you know who that is, he wrote a book called Deep Work. He's a computer science professor and he's currently working on a book about email, about all the ways that email is broken. So it's just going to be a fascinating read. This is a little bit of a general question, but almost a bigger picture question that we touched on a little bit, but let's just touch

it in a full way, which is, what have all the psychedelic studies you've conducted taught you about the human mind? About the human brain and the human mind? Is there something, if you look at the human scientist you were before this work and the scientist you are now, how is your understanding of the human mind changed? I'm thinking of that in two categories, one kind of more scientific, and they're both scientific but one more about you know more about the the brain and behavior and the mind so to speak and as a behaviorist always see sort of the mind as a metaphor for behaviors of but anyway that gets philosophical but it's really increasing the

It's really increasing the, so the one category is increasing the appreciation for the magnitude of depth. I mean, so these are all metaphors of human experience. That might be a good way to, because you use certain words like consciousness and what it's like we're using constructs that aren't well defined unless we kind of dig in, but human experience like that, the experiences on these compounds can be so far out there or so deep. And that, like, and they're doing that by tinkering with the same machinery that's going on up there. I mean, I'm at my assumption, and I think it's a good assumption, is that all experiences, you know, there's a there's a biological side to all phenomenal experience. You know, so there is not, you know, the divide between biology, you know, and and and experience or psychology is,

you know, it's not one or the other. These are just two sides of the same coin. I mean, you're avoiding the use of the word consciousness, for example, but the experiences are referring to the subjective experience. So it's the actual technical use of the word consciousness of yeah, the the subject of experience. And even that word, there are certain ways that like,

like sort of like if we're talking about access, consciousness or narrative self-awareness, which is an aspect of, like, you can rap a definition around that we can talk meaningfully about it, but so often around psychedelics, it's used in this much more, you know, in terms of ultimately explaining phenomenal consciousness itself, the so-called hard problem relating to that question and psychedelics really haven't spoken to that, and that's why it's hard because it's hard to imagine anything. But I think what I was getting is that psychedelics have done this by the reason I was getting into the biology versus mind psychology divide is that that Just to kind of set up the fact that I think all of our experience is

related to these biological events So whether they be naturally occurring neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine and norepinephrine etc transmitters, like serotonin and dopamine and norpinephrine, et cetera, and a whole other sort of biological activity and kind of another layer up that we could talk about as network activity, communication amongst brain areas. Like, this is always going on, even if I just prompt you to think about a loved one. You know, like, there's something happening biologically. Okay, so that's always another side of the coin. So another way to put that is all

of our subjective experience outside of drugs. It's all a controlled hallucination in a sense. Like, this is completely constructed. Our experience of reality is completely a simulation. So I think we're on solid ground to say that that's our best guess and that's a pretty reasonable thing to say scientifically. It's like all the rich complexity of the world emerges from just some biology and some chemicals. So in that definition, implied occultization, it comes from. And so that's, we know at least there's a solid correlation there. And so then we delve deep into the philosophy of idealism or materialism and things like this,

which I'm not an expert in, but I know we're getting into that territory. You don't even necessarily have to go there, like you at least go to the level of like, okay, we know there seems to be this one-on-one correspondence and that seems pretty solid. Like you can't prove a negative, and you can't prove,

you know, it's a fun in that category of like, you could come up with an experience that maybe doesn't have a biological correlate, but then you're talking about there's also the limits of the science, it was a false negative, but I think our best guess in a very decent assumption is that every psychological event has a biological correlate.

So with that said, you know, the idea that you can throw alter that biology in a pretty trivial manner. I mean, you could take like a relatively small number of these molecules, throw them into the nervous system, and then have a 60 year old person who has, you name it. I mean, that has hiked to the top of Everest and that speaks five languages and that has been married and has kids and grandkids and has, you know, you know, like, been at the top and say,

this fundamentally changed who I am as a person and what I think life is about. Like, that's the thing about psychedelics who I am as a person and what I think life is about. Like that's the thing about psychedelics that just floors me and it never fails. I mean, sometimes you get bogged down by the paperwork and running studies and all of the, I don't know, all of the BS that can come with being an academia and everything.

And then you, and sometimes you get some dud sessions where it's not the full, all the magic isn't happening. And it's more or less it's the other adud or somewhere and I mean to dismiss them, but you know, it's not like these magnificent sort of reports. But sometimes you get the full Monty report from one of these people and you're like, oh, yeah, that's why we're doing this. Whether it's like therapeutically or just to understand the mind, and you're like, you're still flawed. Like, how is that possible? How did we slightly alter serotonergic neuro transmission

and say, in this person is now saying that they're making fundamental differences in the priorities of their life after 60 years. It also just fills you with all of the possibility of experiences we yet to have uncovered. If just a few chemicals can change so much, it's like, man, what if this could be optimistic? I mean, like, ha, cause we're just like took a little, it's like lighting a match or something in the darkness and you could see there's a lot more there,

but you don't know how much more. And that's right. And then like, where's that gonna go with like, I mean, I'm always like aware of the fact that like, we always as humans and as scientists think that we figured out 99% were working on that first one percent and we got to keep reminding ourselves It's hard to do like we figured out like not even one percent like we know nothing. Yeah, and so like I

Can't I can speculate and I might sound like a fool, but like what are drugs even the concept of drugs like 10 year 50 years 100 years a years, 1000 years if we're surviving like molecules that go to a specific area of the brain, in combination with technology, in combination with the magnetic stimulation, in combination with the targeted pharmacology of like, oh, like this subset of serotonin 2A receptors in the classroom, you know, at this time, in this particular sequence in combination with this other thing, like this baseball cap you wear that like has, you know, has has one of the is doing some of these things that we can only do with these like giant like pieces of equipment now, like where it's going to go is going

to be endless and it becomes easy to, you know, combine within virtual reality where the virtual reality is going to move from being something out here to being more in there. And then we're getting, like we talked about before, we're already in a virtual reality in terms of human perception and cognition models of the universe being all representations and sort of color not existing, it's just our representations of EM wavelengths, et cetera, sound, being vibrations and all of this. And so as the external VR and the internal VR come closer to each other,

like this is what I think about in terms of the future of drugs, like all of this stuff sort of combines. And like where that goes is just it's unthinkable. Like we're probably going to, you know, again, I might sound like a fool and this may not happen, but I think it's possible, you know, to go completely off-lot, like where most of people's experiences may be going into these internal worlds. I mean, maybe you through some, through a combination of these techniques, you create experiences where someone could live a thousand years

in terms of maybe they're living a regular lifespan, but over the next two seconds, you're living a thousand years worth of experience. Inside your mind. Yeah, through this manipulation of the like, is that possible? Like just based on like, first principles and like, I think so. Like give us another 50, 500, like, who knows, but like, how could it not go there? And a small tangent, what are your thoughts in this broader definition of drugs, of psychedelics, of mind altering things?

What are your thoughts about neuro-link and brain computer interfaces, sort of being able to electrically stimulate and read neuronal activity in the brain and then connect that to the computer, which is another way from a computational perspective for me is kind of appealing, but it's another way of altering subtly the behavior of the brain that's kind of if you zoom out reminiscent of the way psychedelics do as well. So what do you have? Like what are your thoughts about neurolink? What are your hopes as a researcher of mind altering devices, systems, chemicals?

I guess broadly speaking, I'm all for it. I mean, for the same reason I am with psychedelics, but it comes with all the caveats. You know, you're going into a brave new world where it's like all the sudden, there's going to be a dark side. There's going to be, you know, that serious ethical considerations, but that that should not stop us from moving there. I mean, particularly the stuff from an unknown expert, but on the short list, in the short term, it's like, yeah, can we help these serious

neurological disorders? Like, hell yeah. Like, and I'm also sensitive to something being someone that has lots of neuroscience colleagues. With some of this stuff, and I can't talk about particulars I'm not recalling, but you know, in terms of, you know, stuff getting out there and then kind of a mocking of, of, of, of, uh, you know, oh gosh, they're, they're saying this is unique. We, we know this or sort of like this belittling of like, oh, you know, this sounds

like it's just a, I don't know, a commercialization or like an oversimple. I forget what the example was, but something like something that came off to some of my neuroscientific colleagues as an oversimplification, or at least the way they said it. Oh, from a new-link perspective. Right. Oh, we've known that for years. Yes, it's so. And like, but I'm very sympathetic to like, maybe it's because of my very limited, but relatively speaking, the amount of exposure to the psychedelic work has had to my limited experience of being out there. And then you think about someone like,

like Musk, who's like, like, really, really out there and you just get all these arrows that like, and it's hard to be like when you're plowing new ground, like you're gonna get, you're gonna get criticized like every little word that you, the spouts between speaking to like people when you're plowing new ground, like you're gonna get, you're gonna get criticized, like every little word that you, the spouts between speaking to like people to make it meaningful, something scientists aren't very good at.

Yes. Having people understand what you're saying, and then being belittled by oversimplifying something in terms of the public message. So I'm extremely sympathetic, and I'm a big fan of like what that, you know, what Elon Musk does, like, tunnels through the ground, you know, what Elon Musk does. Like, yeah, tunnels through the ground and SpaceX and all this is like hell, yeah.

Like this guy has some, has some great ideas. And there's something to be said. It's not just the communication to the public. I think his first principles thinking it's like, because I get this in the artificial intelligence world. There's probably so much in your science world where Elon will say something like, or I worked at MIT, I worked on autonomous vehicles. And he's sort of, I get the sense how much he pisses off like every robot assist at MIT and everybody who works on

like the human factor side of safety of autonomous vehicles in saying like, we don't need to consider human beings in the car. Like, the ill car will drive itself. It's obvious that neural networks is all you need. Like, it's obvious that we should be able to, systems that should be able to learn constantly. And they don't really need LiDAR. They just need cameras because we humans just use our eyes and that's the same as cameras.

So, like, it doesn't why would we need anything else? And you just have to make a system that learns faster and faster and faster, and neural networks can do that. And so, that's pissing off every single community. It's pissing off human factors community saying, you don't need to consider the human driver in the picture. You can just focus on the robotics problem. It's pissing off every robotics person person for saying light-ars can be just ignored, it can be camera. Every robotics person knows that camera is really noisy. There's

really difficult to deal with. But he's, and then every AI person who says, who hears neural networks and says like neural networks can learn everything like almost presuming that it's kind of going to achieve general intelligence. The problem with all those haters in the three communities is that they're looking one year ahead, five years ahead, the hilarious thing about the quote unquote ridiculous things that Elon Musk is saying is they have a pretty good shot of being true in 20 years. And so like when you just look at the progression of these kinds of predictions, and sometimes first principles things in thinking can allow you to do that, is you see that it's kind of obvious that things are going to progress this way. And if you just remove the prejudice you hold about the particular battles of the current

academic environment and just look at the big picture of the progression of the technology, you can usually see the world in the same kind of way. And so in that same way, looking at psychedelics, you can see like there is so many exciting possibilities here, if we fully engage in the research, same thing with neural link, if we fully engage, so we go from 1,000 channels of communication to the brain to billions of channels of communication to the brain. And we figure out many of the

details of how to do that safely with neurosurgery and so on, that the world would just change completely in the same kind of way that Elon is so ridiculous to hear him talk about between AI and the human brain. But it's like, is it though? Like, is it? Because I can see in the 50 years that it's going to be an obvious, like everyone will have, like obviously, like why are we typing stuff in the computer? Doesn't make any sense, that's stupid.

People used to type on a keyboard with a mouse. What is that? And it seems pretty clear, like we're gonna be there. Yeah. And the only question is like, what's the timeframe? Is that gonna be 20 or is it 50 or 100? Like, how could we not? And the thing that I guess upsets with Elon and others

is the timeline he tends to do. I think a lot of people tend to do that kind of thing. I definitely do it, which is like, it'll be done this year versus like, it'll be done in 10 years. The timeline is a little bit too rushed, but from our leadership perspective, it inspires the engineers to do the best work of their life to really kind of believe,

because to do the impossible, you have to first believe it, which is a really important aspect of innovation. And there's the delayed discounting aspect I talked about before. It's like saying, oh, this is going to be a thing 20, 50 years from now. It's like what motivates anybody? If you can, and even if you're fudging it or like wishful thinking a little bit, or let's just say airing on one side of the probability distribution,

like there's value in saying like, yeah, like there's a chance we could get this done in a year. And you know what? And if you set a goal for a year and you're not successful, hey, you might get it done in three years, whereas if you had aimed at 20 years, well, you either would have never done it at all or you would have aimed at 20 years and then what it would have taken you 10. So the other thing I think about this, like in terms of his work and I guess we've seen

with psychedelics, it's like, there a lack of appreciation for like sort of the variability you need a natural selection sort of extrapolating from biological, you know, from evolution. Like, hey, maybe he's wrong about focusing only on the cameras and not these other things. Be empirically driven. It's like, yeah, you need to like when he's, you know, when you need to get the regulations, it's safe enough to get the same on the road. Those are real questions. And be empirically driven.

And if he can meet the whatever standard is relevant, that's the standard and be driven by that. So don't let it affect your ethics. But if he's on the wrong path, how wonderful someone's exploring that wrong path, he's gonna figure out it's a wrong path. And like other people, he's, damn it, he's doing something. out it's a wrong path. And like other people, he's, damn it, he's doing something.

Like, he's, you know, and, and so I appreciating that variability, you know, that like it's valuable, even if he's not on to, I mean, this is all over the place in, in science. It's like a good theory, one standard definition is that it generates testable hypotheses. And like, the ultimate model is never going to be the same as reality. Some models are going to work better than others. Like, you know, Newtonian physics got us a long ways, even if there was a better model like waiting. And some models weren't as good as, you know,

were never that successful, but just even like putting them out there and test it. We wouldn't know something is a bad model until someone puts it out anyway. So. Yeah, diversity of ideas is essential for progress. Yeah. So we brought up consciousness a few times.

There's several things I want to kind of disentangle there. So one, you've recently wrote a paper titled Consciousness Religion and Guru's Pitfalls of Psychedelic Medicine. So that's one side of it. You've kind of already mentioned that these terms can be a little bit misused or used in a variety of ways that they can be confusing. But in a specific way, as much as we can be specific about these things, about the actual

heart problem of consciousness, understanding what is consciousness, this weird thing that it feels like, it feels like something to experience things, have psychedelics given you some kind of insight on what is consciousness. You've mentioned that it feels like psychedelics allows you to kind of dismantle your sense of self, like step outside of yourself. That feels like somehow playing with this mechanism of consciousness. And if it is in fact playing with the mechanism of consciousness using just a few chemicals, it feels like we're very much in the neighborhood of being able to maybe understand the actual biological mechanisms of how consciousness can emerge from the brain.

So yeah, there's a bunch there. I think my purpose is that I certainly have opinions that are outside, that I can say, here are my best speculations as a, as just a person and an armchair philosopher and it's that philosophy is certainly not my, my training and my expertise. So, I have thoughts there, but that, that I recognize are completely in the realm of speculation that are like things that I would love to wrap empirical science around, but that are, you know, there's no data and getting to the hard problem, like no conceivable way, even though I'm very open, like I'm hoping that that problem can be cracked.

And I do, I, as an armed chair philosopher, I do think that is a problem. I don't think it can be dismissed to some people argue. It's not even really a problem. It strikes me that explaining just the existence of phenomenal consciousness is a problem. So anyway, I very much keep that divide in mind when I talk about these things. What we can really say about what we've learned through science, including by psychedelics versus like what I can speculate on in terms of, you know, the nature of reality and consciousness. But in terms of by and large, skeptically, I have to say psychedelics have not really taught

us anything about the nature of consciousness. I'm hopeful that they will. They have been used around certain, I don't even know if features is the right term, but things that are called consciousness. So consciousness can refer to not only just phenomenal consciousness, which is like, you know, the source of the hard problem and what it is to be like, Nagle's description. But the sense of self, which can be sort of like the experiential self, moment to moment, or it can be like the narrative self, the string together of story. So those are things that I think can be and a little bit's been done with

psychedelics regarding that. But I think there's far more potential. But so like one story that unfolded is that psychedelics acutely have an effect on the default mode network, a certain pattern of activation amongst a subset of brain areas that is associated with self-referential processing. Seems to be more active, more communication between these areas, like the past area, or singular cortex, and the medial prefrontal cortex,

for example, being parts of this that are, and others that are tied with sort of thinking about yourself from remembering yourself in the past, projecting yourself into the future. And so that, an interesting story emerged when, it was found that when psilocybin is on board, you know, in the person's system, that there's a, there's less communication amongst these, these areas. So with resting state FMR, imaging that there's, there's less synchronization or presumably communication between these areas.

And so I think it has been overstated. And so we see this is like the dissolving of the ego. This is the story made a whole lot of sense. But there's several, I think that story is really being challenged. Like one, we see increasing number of drugs of drugs that decouple that network, including ones that aren't psychedelic. This may just be a property, frankly, of being screwed up, being out of your head, being like...

Anytime you mess with a perception system, maybe it screws up some... Our ability to just function in the holistically like we do in order. Yeah, for the brain to perceive stuff, to be able to map it to memory, to connect things together, the whole of a current mechanism that could just be messed with. Right. And it couldn't, I'm speculating, it could be tied to more if you had to download in the language, everyday language language like not feeling like yourself Like so whether that be like really drunk or really hopped up on in fetamine or

You know on like we found it like decoupling of the default mode network on salvin or nay, which is a smokeable Psychedelic which is a non-classic psychedelic But another one where like DMT where people are often talking to entities and that type of thing That was a really fun study to run But nonetheless most people say it's not a classic psychedelic and doesn't have some of those phenomenal features that people report from classic psychedelics and not sort of the clear sort of ego-loss type, at least not in the way that people report it with classic psychedelic. So you get it with all these different drugs. And so and then you also see just broad broad changes in network activity with other networks. And so I think that story took off a little too soon, although so I think in the story that the DMN,

the default mode network relating to the self and I know some neuroscientists it drives them crazy if you say that it's the ego. And that's like, but self-referential processing, if you go that far, like that was already known before psychedelics. Psychedelics didn't really contribute to that. The idea that this type of of net brain network activity was related to a sense of self. But it is absolutely striking that psychedelics that people report with pretty high reliability, these unity experiences that where people subjectively like, like they report losing or again, like the boundaries of that, however you want to say it, like, like these, these unity experiences, I think we can do a lot with that in terms of figuring out the nature of the sense of self. Now, I don't think that's the same as the hard problem or the existence

of phenomenal consciousness, because you can build an AI system and you correct me if I'm wrong, that like, we'll pass a touring test in terms of demonstrating the qualities of a sense of self. It will talk as if there's a self, and there's probably a certain algorithm or whatever, like computational scaling up of computations that results in somehow. And I think this is the argument with humans, with some have speculated this, why do we have the solution of the self that's evolved that we might find this with AI that like, it works, you know, having a sense of self

or in that state it wrong incorrectly, like acting as if there is an agent at play and dimming behaviorally acting like, you know, there is a self that might kind of work. And so you can program a computer or a robot to basically demonstrate- have an algorithm like that and demonstrate that type of behavior. And I think that's completely silent on whether there's an actual experience inside there. I've been struggling to find the right words and how I feel about that whole thing,

but because I've said it poorly before, I've before said that there's no difference between the appearance and the actual existence of consciousness or intelligence or any of that. What I really mean is the more the appearance starts to be look like the thing, the more there's this area where it's like, I don't think, I don't, our whole idea of what is real and what is just an illusion is not the right way to think about it. So the whole idea is like if you create a system that looks like it's having fun, the more it's realistically able to portray itself as having fun, like there's a certain gray area at which the system is having fun.

And say what intelligence, say what consciousness, and we humans want to simplify it. Like it feels like the way we simplify the existence and the illusion of something is missing the whole truth of the nature of reality, which we're not yet able to understand. Like it's the 1% we only understand 1% currently so we don't have the right physics to talk about things we don't have the right science to talk about things but to me like the faking it and actually being true is the difference is much smaller than when humans would like to imagine. That's my intuition. But philosophers hate that because, and guess what, it's philosophers.

What have you actually built? So, to me, that's the difference in philosophy and engineering. It feels like if we push the creation, the engineering, like fake it until you make it all the way, which is like fake consciousness until you realize holy crap, this thing is conscious, fake intelligence until you realize holy crap, this intelligence. And from the my curiosity was psychedelics and just neurobiology, neuroscience, it's like, it feels, I'm, I love the armchair. I love sitting in that armchair because it feels like at a certain point, you're going to think about this problem and there's going to be an aha moment.

Like, that's what the armchair does. Sometimes science prevents you from really thinking, wait, like, it's really simple. There's something really simple. There's something really simple like there's some that could be some Dance of chemicals that were totally unaware of not from not from aspects of like which chemicals to combine With which biological architectures, but more like we were thinking of it completely wrong that But completely wrong that out of the blue, like maybe the human mind is just like a radio that tunes into some other medium where consciousness actually exists, like those weird sort of hypothetically, but maybe we're just thinking about the human mind totally wrong. Maybe there's no such thing as individual intelligence. Maybe it is all collective

intelligence between humans. Like maybe the intelligence is possessed in the communication of language between minds. And then in fact consciousness is a property of that language versus a property of the individual minds. And somehow the neurotransmitters will be able to connect to that. So then AI systems can join that common collective intelligence, that common language. Like just thinking completely outside of the box. I just said a much increase thing. I don't know, but thinking outside the box. And there's something about subtle manipulation of the chemicals of the brain, which feels like the best or one of the great chances of the scientific process leading us to an actual understanding of the heart problem. So I am very hopeful that and so I mean I'm a radical empiricist which I'm very strong with that like that's what you know, so you know,

sciences and about ultimately being a materialist, it's like it's about being an empiricist in my view. And so for example, I'm very fascinated by the so-called sci-phenominant, you know, like stuff that people just kind of reject out of hand. You know, I kind of orient towards that stuff with with an idea of, you know, hey, look hey, look, what we consider, anything exists is natural. But the boundary of what we observe in nature, what we recognize is in nature moves. What we do today and what we know today would only be described as magic 500 years ago, or even 100 years ago, some of it.

There will surely be things that like you explain these phenomena that just sound like completely soup, they're supernatural now, where there may be for some of it, like some of it might turn out to be a complete bunk and some of it might turn out to be, it's just another layer of nature, whether we're talking about multiple dimensions that are invoked or something we don't even have the language to work. And what you're saying about the moving together, the model and the real thing of consciousness, like, I'm very sympathetic to that. So that's that part of like on the arm share side where I want to be clear, I can't say this is a scientist, but just terms of speculating. I find myself attracted

to these more of the sort of the panpsychism ideas. And that kind of makes sense to me. I don't know if that's what you meant there, but it seemed like related to the sense that ultimately, if you were completely modeling, like if you completely modeling, unless you dismiss like the idea that there is a phenomenal consciousness, which I think is hard given that I seem like I have one,

that's really all I know, but that's so compelling. I can't just dismiss that. If you take that as a given, then the only way for the model and the real thing to merge is if there is something baked into the nature of reality, sort of like in the history of like there's certain just like fundamental forces or fundamental, and that's been useful for us. And sometimes we find out that that's point towards something else or sometimes it's still, seems like it's a fundamental

and sometimes it's a placeholder for someone to figure out, but there's something like this is just a given. This is just, and sometimes something like gravity seems like a very good place holder than there's something better that comes to replace it. So, you know, I kind of think about consciousness and I didn't, I kind of had this inclination,

but I knew there was a term for it, Rosalion Monos, the idea that, which is a form of pain, and again, I'm an armchair philosopher, not a very good one. Broadly, parents, I guess, and by the way, is the idea that sort of consciousness permeates all matter in or it's a fundamental part of physics of the universe kind of thing. So right. There's a lot of different flavors of it as you're as you're alluding to. And something that struck me as like consistent with some just, you know, inclinations of mine, just

total speculation is this idea of everything we know in science and with most of the stuff we think of physics, you know, really describes, it's all interactions. It's not the thing itself. Like there's a, there, there was something to the, and this sounds very new AG, which is why it's, it's very difficult and I have a high bullshit, like meter and everything, but like in isness. I mean, I think about like Huxley, all this Huxley with his masculine experience and doors of processional, like there's an isness there in, you know, Alan Watts, like there is a nature of being, again, very new AG sounding, but maybe there is something to, and when we say consciousness, we think of like this human experience, but maybe that's just that's so processed and so that's so far, so

derivative of this kind of basic thing that we wouldn't even recognize the basic thing, but the basic thing might just be, this is not about the interaction between particles. This is what it is like to exist as a particle. And maybe it's not even particles. Maybe it's like space time itself. I mean, again, totally in the speculation. And something else based on, so it's funny because we don't have the neither the science nor the proper language to talk about it.

All we have is kind of little intuitions about, there might be something in that direction of the darkness to pursue. And in that sense, I find panpsychism interesting in that it does feel like there's something fundamental here. The consciousness is not just like, okay, so the flip side consciousness could be just a very basic, intruvial symptom, like a little hack of nature that's useful for like survival of an organism. It's not something fundamental. It's just this very basic boring chemical thing that somehow is convinced us humans because we're very human-centric, we're very self-centric

that this is somehow really important, but it's actually pretty obvious. But, or it could be something really fundamental to the nature of the universe. So both of those are to be pretty compelling. And I think eventually scientifically testable, it is so frustrating that it's hard to design scientific experiment currently, but I think that's how Nobel prizes are won is nobody did it until they do it. The reason I lean towards, and again, armchair spec, if I had a bet, like $1,000 on which one of these ultimately be proved, I would, I would head, I would lean towards, I'd put my bets on,

on something like Panpsychism, rather than the, the emergence of phenomenal consciousness through complexity or computational complexity, because although certainly, what if there is some underlying fundamental consciousness, it's clearly being processed and in this way, you go through computation in terms of resulting in our experience and the experience presumably of other animals. But the reason I would bled on panpsychism is to me, Occam's razor, it just in terms of truly the hard problem,

like at some point you have an inside looking out, and even looking refers to vision, and that's just an exact, but just there's an inside experiencing something. At some point of complexity, all of a sudden, you start from the subjective universe and all we know about is interactions between things and things happen. And at this certain level of complexity, magically, there's an inside.

That to me doesn't pass Occam's razor as easily as maybe there is a fundamental property of the universe of, you know, there's both subjective and objective. There is both interactions amongst things and there is the thing itself. Yes. But yeah. So I'm of two minds. I agree with you totally on what the half of my mind and the other half is I've seen looking at cellular atomic, a lot, which is complex.

It sure does seem that we don't understand anything about complexity, like the emergence, just the property. In fact, that could be a fundamental property of reality, something within the emergence from simple things interacting, somehow miraculous things happen. And like that, I don't understand that, that could be that could be fundamental, that like something about the layers of abstraction, like layers of reality, like really small things interacting. And then on another layer emerges actual complicated behavior, even on the underlying thing is super simple.

Like that process, we don't really don't understand either. And that could be bigger than any of the things we're talking about. That's the basic force behind everything that's happening in the universe is from simple, things complex phenomena can happen. And the thing that gives me pause is that I'm concerned about a threshold there. Like how is it likely that now there may be, and there may be some qualitative shift

that in the realm of like we don't even, we don't even understand complexity yet, like you're saying, like so maybe there is, but I do think like if it is a result of the complexity, well, you know, just having helium versus hydrogen is a form of complexity, having the existence of stars versus clouds of gas as a complexity, the entire universe has been this increasing complexity. And so that kind of brings me back to then the other of like, okay, if, okay, if it's about complexity, then we should, then it exists at a certain level in these simple systems like a star or, you

know, the work complex atom. That's the panpsychism, that's right. But we humans, the qualitative shift we might have evolved to appreciate certain kinds of thresholds. Right. Yeah. I do think it's likely that this idea that whether or not there's an inner experience, which is phenomenal,

it's the hard problem, that acting like an agent, like having an algorithm that basically operates as if there is an agent, that's clearly a thing that I think has worked and that there is a whole lot to figure out there that, that that and I think psychedelics will be extremely helpful in figuring more out about that because they do seem to a lot of times eliminate that or whatever radically shift that sense of of self. Let me ask the craziest question.

Indulge me for a second. Oh, this is a joke. What we've been talking about? Like, OK. I'll see it. Hold on. All of this is assigned. All of that, despite the caveat that I brought on,

Chair, I think is within the reach of science. Let me ask one that's kind of also within the reach of science, but as Joe likes to say, it's entirely possible, right? Is it possible that with these DMT trips, when you meet entities, is it possible that these entities are extraterrestrial life forms? Like our understanding of little green men with aliens that show up is totally off. I haven't think about this like what would actual extraterrestrial intelligence look like? And my sense is that it will look like very different from anything we can even begin to comprehend and how would it communicate? How would it communicate? Would it be necessarily spaceships, would it still travel or? Could it be communicating through chemicals,

through if there's a panpsychism situation, if there's something not if. I almost for sure know we don't understand, you know, a lot about the function of our mind in connection to the fabric of the physics and the universe. A lot of people seem to think we have the physics and the universe. A lot of people seem to think we have theoretical physics pretty figured out. I have my doubts because I'm pretty sure it always feels like we have everything figured out until we don't.

Right. There's no grand unifying theory yet, right? But even that, we could be missing out the concept of the universe just can be completely off, like how many other universes are there, all those kinds of things. I mean, just the basic nature of information, the time, time, all those things. Yeah, whether that's just like a thing we assigned value to or whether it's fundamental or not, that's the whole chunk. I can talk to Sean, I can talk to Sean, I can whole shocker. I can talk to Shankar forever about whether time is emergent or fundamental to the reality.

But is it possible that the entities who meet actual alien life forms? Do you ever think about that? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do. And I've, to some degree, laid my cards out with by identifying as a radical empiricist. And it's like, so the answer is it possible. And I think, you know, ultimately, if you're a good scientist,

you got to say, now that's at the extremes, it's a, like, yes, you know, and it might get more interesting when you had to, you're asked to guess about the probability of that. Is that a one in a million, one in a trillion, one in a, one in more than the number of atoms in the universe, probability. And as an empiricist, it's like, what is a good testable? Like, how would you know the answer to that question? Well, how would you be able to validate?

I mean, Well, can you get some information that's verifiable? Like, like, information that about some other planet or some aspect, some, and gosh, it would have been an interesting range, but what range of discovery that we can anticipate we're gonna know within, you know, whatever, a few years, next five, 10, 20 years, and seeing if you can get that information now and then over time, it might

be verified. You know, the type of thing like, you know, part of Einstein's work was ultimately verified, not until decades and decades later, at least certain aspects through empirical observations. But it's also possible that the alien beings have a very different value system and perception of the world where all of this Little capitalistic improvements that were all after like predicting the concept of predicting the future to is like totally useless to other life forms that have that perhaps think in a much Different way maybe a more transcendent way, I don't know,

but... So they wouldn't even sign the consent form to be a participant in our experiment. They would not. They would not. And they wouldn't understand the nature of these experiments. I mean, that maybe it's purely in the realm of the consciousness, the thing that we talked about. So communicating in a way that is totally different than the kinds of communication that we think of as our Earth.

Like what's the purpose of communication for us? For us humans, the purpose of communication is sharing ideas. It feels like like converging. It's the dockins like memes. It's like we're sharing ideas in order to figure out how to collaborate together to get food into our systems and Procreate and then like murder everybody in the neighboring tribe because they they'll steal our food like we are all about sharing ideas. Maybe our food, like we are all about sharing ideas. Maybe it's possible to have another alien life form that's more about sharing experiences, you know, like it's less about ideas, I don't know.

And maybe that'll be us in a few years. How could it not like instead of explaining something laboriously to you, like having people describe the ineffable psychedelic experience, like if we could record that and then get the neural link of 50 years from now like I'll just plug this into your just transfer in the yeah It's like oh now you feel what it's what it's like and like in one sense like how could we not go there and then you get into the realm Especially when you throw time into it are the aliens us yeah in the future or even like a transcendental temporal Like the us beyond time. I don't know, like you get into this realm.

There's a lot of possibilities. Yeah, but I think, you know, there's one psychedelic researcher that's who did high dose DMT research in the 90s who speculated that, that there was a lot of alien encounter experiences, like maybe these are, like entities from some other dimension or.

He labeled it as speculation, but, you know. Do you remember the name? Oh, Rick Strossman. Oh, Rick Strossman. Yeah, yeah, the DMT work. He labeled it as speculation, but, you know, I think that, yeah, I think we'd be wise to kind of, you know, it's always that balance between being empirically grounded and skeptical, but also not being, and I think in science, well,

often we are too closed, which relates to like you're talking about E-line, like, in academia, it's like, often, like, I think you're punished for thinking or even talking about 20 years from now, because it's just so far removed from your next grant or for your next paper that you're, it's easy pickings. And, you know, that you're not allowed to speculate. So I think though, I'm a huge fan of, I think the best way to me, at least to practice like science or to practice good engineering is to to do two things and just bounce off, spend most of the time doing the rigor of the day to day

of what can be accomplished now in the engineering space or in the science, what can you construct an experiment around do like that, the usual rigor of the scientific process, but then every once in a while, on a regular basis, the step outside and talk about aliens and consciousness, and we just walk along the line of things that are outside the reach of science currently, free will, the illusion or the perception of the experience of free will, anything, just just the entirety of it, being able to travel in time through warm holes, it's like it's really useful to do that, especially as a scientist.

Like, if that's all you do, you go into a land where you're not actually able to think rigorously, there's something, at least to me, that if you just hop back and forth, you're able to, I think, do exactly the kind of injection of out of the box thinking to your regular day-to-day science that will ultimately lead to breakthroughs. But you have to be the good scientist most of the time. And that's consistent with what I think the great scientists of history, like in most of the

history, the greats, the newtons and, you know, Einstein's, I mean, they were, there was less of a change, I think, as time marched on, but less of a separation between those realms. It's like, there's the inclination now for it's like, as a scientist, and this is like, you know, this is science, this is my work, and then this is like my inclination to say, oh, Lex, don't take me too seriously, because this is my armchair, I'm not speaking as a scientist, I'm bending over backwards to say, you know, to divide that self, and maybe there's been a less less of there's been that evolution and and that's and like the greats like didn't see that. I mean, you go back in time and it's like that

obviously like connects to then religion, especially if that is the predominant world or Newton, like how much, you know, like how much time did he spend trying to like decode the Bible and what not? You know, and maybe that was a dead end, But it's like, if you really believe in that, in that particular religion, and you're this mastermind and you're trying to figure things out, it's not like, oh, this is what my job description is. And this is what the grant wants. It's like, no, I've got this limited time on the planet. I'm going to figure out as much stuff as possible.

Nothing is off the table. And you're just putting it all together. So this is kind of this trajectory is bringing you related to this the siloing in science. Like, again, related to my like, oh, I'm not a philosopher, you know, going where they could say that science are not not empirical science, but like going to these different disciplines, like, you know, the greats, you know, didn't observe the bad. The bounties didn't exist. They can observe them. Yeah. Yeah, observe the bounties and exist and observe them. Yeah

so speaking of the finiteness of our existence on in this world So on the front of psychedelics and teaching you lessons as a researcher as a human being What have you learned about death about mortality about the finiteness of our existence? Are you yourself afraid of death and how has your view do ponder it and has your view of your mortality changed with the research you've done? Yeah, yeah. So I do ponder it and... Are you afraid of death?

Probably on a daily basis, do ponder it and you're afraid of death probably on a daily basis. I ponder it. I would I'd have to pick it apart more and say, yeah, I am afraid of dying, like the the process of dying. Um, I'm not afraid of being dead. I mean, I'm not afraid of I think it was Pingellet that said, uh, and he may have gotten it from someone else, but like, I'm not afraid of the year, you know, 1862. Before I existed but I'm not afraid of the year 1862 before I existed. I'm not afraid of the year 2262 after I'm gone.

It's gonna be fine, but yeah, dying, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't afraid of dying. And so there's both the process of dying, yeah, it's usually not good. It'd be nice if it was after many, many years and just sort of, you know, I'd rather not fall, you know, dying my sleep. I'd rather kind of be conscious, but sort of just die fade out with old age, maybe, but, but like, you know, just being in an accident and like, you know,

horrible diseases, I've seen enough loved ones. It's like, yeah, this is not good. This is enough to be, you know, I'd like to say that I'm I'm peaceful and sort of balanced enough that I'm not concerned all but no, like yeah, I'm afraid of dying But I'm also concerned about I think about family like I I'm really it. I'm afraid or at least can you know concerned about Like not being there like with a three year old not being there not being there, like with a three year old, not being there, not being there for him and my wife and my mom, the rest of her life, I'm concerned about not, I'm concerned more about like the harm that it would cause if I left prematurely. And then kind of even bigger along the lines of some of the stuff that Ford think we've

been talking about. I think maybe way too much about just like, and I'll never know the answer. So even if I lived to, you know, 120, like, but like, I want to know as much as I can, but like, how is this going to work out like as humans? Are we? And a big one, I think, is, are we going to, and I don't think unfortunately I'm going to learn it in my lifetime, even if I lived to a ripe old age, but well, I don't know. Is this gonna work out?

Like, are we gonna escape the planet? I think that's one of the biggies. Like, are we gonna, like, the survival of the speed, like, I think the next, like, the time we're in now, it's like with the nuclear weapons, with pandemics, and with, I mean, we're gonna get to the point where anyone can build a hydrogen bomb. Like, you know, it's like, you just like the example or engineer, like, the, you know,

something that's a million times worse than COVID and then you spread it. It's like, we're getting to this period of, and then not, you know, not to mention climate change. You know, it's like, although I think that's not, there's probably going to be surviving humans with that regard, you know, but it could be really bad. But these existential threats, I think, the only real guarantee that we're going to be surviving humans with that regard, you know, but it could be really bad. But these existential threats, I think the only real guarantee that we're going to get another, you name it, thousand million, whatever years is like diversity, diverse, diversify our portfolio, get off the planet, you know, don't leave this one, hopefully we keep, you know, but like,

and I, you know, it's like, either we're going to get snuffed out, like really quickly, or we're going to, like, if we, if we reach that point, and it's going to be over the next, like, 100, 200 years, like, like, we're probably going to survive, like, like, until, like, I mean, you know, like our son, like, even beyond that, like, like, we're probably going to be talking about millions and millions of years. It's like, and we're, we're, I don't know, in terms of the planet, four billion years into this, and depending on how you count our species, you know, we're, you know, millions

of years into this. And it's like, it's just like the point of the rear relay race where we can really screw up. So that would make you feel pretty good when you're on your death bed at 120 years old and there's something hopeful about there's a colony starting up on Mars and it's like Yeah, Titan, like whatever, you know, like yeah, like that we have these colonies out there that would tell me like, yeah, then at least we'd be good until like the, you know, hopefully probably until the

sun goes red giant, you know what I mean? Rather than, oh, like 20 years from now, when there's someone with their finger on the nuclear button that just, you know, misperceives, you know, the radar, you know, like the signal they think Russia's attacking are really not or they're China. And like that's probably how a nuclear accident war is gonna start rather than, or the, I guess, these other horrible things. Does it not make you sad that you won't be there

if we are successful at proliferating throughout the observable universe that you won't be there to experience any of it. Yeah, you go death, right? It's the death because you're still gonna die and still gonna be over, right? That's You know with Ernest Becker and those folks really emphasize the the terror of death that if we're honest we'll discover if we search within ourselves Which is like, this thing is going to be over. Most of our existence is based on the illusion that it's going to go forever. And when you sort of realize it's actually going to be over, like today, like, I might murder you at the end of this conversation. It might be over today or like you go on going home.

This might be your last day in the surf. And it's, I mean, like pondering that, I suppose one thing to be me, I, if I were to push back, it's interesting. Is you actually, I think you see comfort in the sadness of how unfortunate it will be for your family to not have you. Because the really, even the deeper, yes, but that's the simple fear. but that's the simple fear. Even the deeper terror is like, like this, this thing doesn't last forever. Like, I think, I don't know, they're, like, it's hard to put the right words to it, but it feels like that's not truly acknowledged

by us, by each of us. Yeah. I think this is the, getting back to the psychedelics in terms of the people in our work with cancer patients who we had civil cyber sessions to help them and it did substantially help them to vast majority in terms of dealing with these existential issues. And I think, you know, it's something we, I could say that I really feel that I've come along in that both like being with folks who have died that are close to me and then also that work. I think of the two big ease and sort of like, you know, I think I've come along in that that sort of acceptance of this. Like like it's not going to last. not going to last. Any whether at the personal level or even at the species level, like at some point all the stars are going to fade out and it's going to be the realm of which is going to be the vast majority of it, unless there's a big crunch, which apparently doesn't seem likely.

Like most of the universe, there's this blink of an eye that's happening right now that life is even possible, like the era of stars. So it's like, we're going to fade out at some point, like, you know, and you know, didn't we get at this level of consciousness and like, okay, maybe there is life after death, maybe there's maybe times in illusion, maybe we're gonna, like, that part I'm ready for, like, I'm like, you know, like, that would be really great and I'm not afraid of that at all. It's like, even if it's just strange, like, if I could push a button to enter that door,

I mean, I'm not gonna, you know, die, you know, kill myself, but it's like, if I could push a button to enter that door, I mean, I'm not going to, you know, die, you know, kill myself, but it's like, if I could take a peek at what that reality is or choose, at the end of my life, if I could choose of entering into a universe where there is an afterlife of something completely unknown versus one where there's none, I think I'd say, well, let's see what's behind that. That's the true scientist way of thinking, if there's a door, you're excited about opening it and going in. Right. When I am attracted to this idea, like, you know, it's, and I recognize it's easier said than done to say I'm okay with not existing.

Yeah. It's like the real test is like, okay, check me on my deathbed. You know, it's like, it's a really old stuff. Be all right. It's a beautiful thing and the humility of surrendering. And I really hope. And I think I'd probably be more likely to be in that realm right now than I would like, or check me when I get a terminal cancer diagnosis, and I really hope I'm more in that realm.

But I know enough about human nature to know that, like, I don't want to, I can't really speak to that because I haven't been in that situation. And I think there can be a beauty to that and the transcendence of like, yeah, and you know, it was, it was beautiful, not just to spite all that, but because of that. Because ultimately there's going to be nothing. And because we came from nothing and we dealt with all this shit, the fact that there was still beauty and truth and connection like that, you know, like it just, it's a beautiful thing. But I hope I'm in that it's easy to say that now, like, yeah. Do you think there's a meaning to this thing? We got going on

life, existence on earth to us individuals from psychedelic research perspective or from just a human perspective. Those merged together for me because it's just hard. I've been doing this research for almost 17 years and like not just the cancer study, but so many times people like I remember a session in one of our studies, someone who wasn't getting any treatment for anything, but one of our healthy, normal studies where he was contemplating the suicide of his son. And just these, I mean, just like the most intense human experiences that you can have in the most vulnerable situations, sometimes like people, like, you know, and it's just like,

you had that have a, and you just feel lucky to be part of that process that people trust you to let their guards down like that. Like, I don't know, the meaning, I think the meaning of life is defined meaning. And I think, I think I just described it a minute ago, it's like that transcendence of everything. Like the, it's the beauty despite the absolute ugliness. It's the, it's the, and as a species, and I think more about this, like, I think

about this a lot, it's the fact that we are, I mean, we're, we come from filth. I mean, we're, we're, you know, we're animals. We come from, like, we're all descendant from murderers and rapists. Like, we despite that background, we are capable of the self-sacrifice and the connection and figuring things out, you know, truth science and other forms of truth, you know, seeking and an artwork, just the beauty of music

and other forms of art. It's like the fact that that's possible is the meaning of life. I mean, and ultimately that feels to be creating a more enricher experience I mean, and ultimately that feels to be creating more and richer experiences. From a Russian perspective, both the dark, the you mentioned, the cancer diagnosis, or losing a child, a suicide, or all those dark things is still rich experiences.

And also the beautiful creations, the are at the music, the science, that's also rich experience. So somehow we're figuring out from just like psychedelics, we spend our mind to the possibility of experiences, somehow we're able to figure out different ways of society to expand the realm of experiences. And from that we gain meaning somehow. Right. And that's part of like this, we're going across different levels here, but like the idea that

so-called bad trips or challenging experiences are so common in psychedelic experiences. It's like that's a part of that. Like yeah, it's tough and most of the important things in life are really, really tough and scary. And most of the things like the death of a loved one, like the greatest learning experiences and things that make you who you are are the horrors. And it's like, yeah, we try to minimize and we try to avoid them. But I don't know, I think we all need to get into the motive like giving ourselves a break both personally

and societally. I mean, I went through like the, I think a lot of people do these days in my 20s. Like, all the humans are just a, kind of a disease on the planet. And then in terms of our country, in terms of the United States, it's like, oh, we have a holly's horrible, you know, sins in our past. And it's like, I think about that like the, I think about it like my three-year-old. It's like, yeah, you can construct a story

where this is all just hard. You can look at that stuff and say this is all just horror. Where there's no logical answer to our rational answer to say we're not a disease on the planet. From one lens, we are. You could just look at humanity as that, like nothing but this horrible thing. You can look at any, you, in you name the system, you know, modern medicine, Western medicine, you know, the university system. And it's like you can dismiss everything.

So, you know, big farm, like hopefully these vaccines work. And then like, yeah, like, you know, like, I'm kind of glad big farmer was a part of that. In the United States, you can point to the horrors. Any other country that's been around a long time has these legitimate horrors and dismiss these beautiful things. We have this modifiable constitutional republic that I still think is the best thing going, you know, that that as a model system of like how humans have to figure out how to work together. It's like it's how there's no better system that I've come across.

Yeah, there's a if we're willing to look for it, there's a there's a beautiful court. A lot of things we've created. Yeah, this country is a great example of that, but most of the human experience has a beauty to it, even the suffering. Right. So the meaning is, is choosing to focus on that positivity and not forget it. Beautifully put. Speaking of experiences, this was one of my favorite experiences on this podcast, talking to you today, Matthew. I hope you get a chance to talk again

I hope to see you on Joe Rogan the huge honor to talk to you can't wait to read your papers Thanks for talking today. Likewise, I very much enjoyed it. Thank you Thanks for listening to this conversation with Matthew Johnson and thank you to our sponsors brave a fast browser that feels like Chrome, but has more privacy-preserving features. Nuro, the maker of functional sugar-free gum and mints that I used to give my brain a quick caffeine boost, for sigmatic, the maker of delicious mushroom coffee, and cash app. The app I used has had money to friends. Please check out these sponsors in the description to get a discount and to support

this podcast. If you enjoyed this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it with 5,000 Apple podcasts, follow on Spotify, support on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter, Alex Friedman. And now let me leave you with some words from Terrence McKenna. Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under. It will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted

who really touched the alchemical gold. This is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done, by hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a feather bed. Thank you.